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dragonsarecats · 1 year ago

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I'M SORRY FOR WORDING IT LIKE THAT I played the Golden Deers, some of my favorite queer ship are with Deers and some of my favorite character are among the deers! My favorite deer ship is probably Leonie x Lysithea ( She litteraly say Leonie would make an incredible partner! Why do their support stop at B again?? ) and my otp is Hilda x Edelgard ( do not judge me I have REASONS ). And also, one of my favorite queer headcanon is trans aro-ace Claude! So I genuinely love the Deers as queers!

However, for me the deer and the diverse queer content around them is heavily a fandom thing. When I say the deer are "too straight for me", I meant it for the game directly. Like you have the Black Eagles where not only litteraly every characters is canon queer/has heavily subtext but has also its whole narrative drenched in queer metaphor! You have the Blue Lions where, while there's less "canon queer", you litteraly cannot say most of its members are straight with how heavy the subtext that's barely even subtext anymore is: there's 0 straight explanation for Felix crying more at Dimitri death than his wife, or him dying the same day as Sylvain because they can't live without each other.

But for the Deers... You have Hilda/Marianne and Claude/Lorenz as the most popular one but while their relationship are so fascinating, when you only look only at the game, they feel too platonic? Especially compared to a Dedue/Dimitri ( like a family in private. took up a post at his grave for the most of his days. BURIED BESIDE EACHOTHER ) or a Ferdinand/Hubert ( rare A+ support, with blushing, their own little surname, Ferdinand/Edelgard support changing just to mention Ferdinand drinking coffee ). Otherwise you have Leonie/Lysithea which stop at B. You have Raphael/Ignatz where they decided to just push the relationship to make their ending all about Ignatz with his sister.

Like really, the Deers manage to have less in game queer moment than the Church of Seiros, Rhea aside, of all things! We were so robbed! The rainbow house deserve better. I'm a lesbian and after all my playthrough Verdant Winds was my only route where I had to marry a man, all I wanted was a lavender wedding with Claude while I have a passionate romance with Leonie :(

To sum up: Lysithea and Leonie should kiss, Intelligent Systems are fucking cowards

For the fandom I'll have to disagree, I think the Deers have a lot a queer content and it's amazing :] My only thing might be how Claude has become the first character you think of when talking about bi fe3h character which is kinda telling how wlw are dismissed in the general fandom, but its better than some people insisting he's totally straigh so eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

( Also I big agree on Hilda support being gem, she's such a great character and one that's much more complex than given credit for!! )

Oh and I think I disagree with Deers being the more family found-esq ( saying that bc it's a great subject of I discussion and I want to hear more about your opinion on the matter )

The Lions is the family where they all stick together through thick and thin, following Dimitri to hell and back, but their relationship are complexe and not always healthy ( mostly at the beginning with like Dimitri & Felix or Ingrid & Sylvain ).

The Eagles are the found family where a lot of them bitch about each other at first but they end up with deep relationship where they take care for each other and stand together against the world, even sticking together during the time skip ( also because they kinda all killed each other dad ).

The Deers are for me more like an actual close group of friend: their life are not going to revolve around each other like it does with the other houses, but they won't hesitate to come for that 5 years reunion to see the other. It's kinda like you say they're so normal in a good way! They tease each other but they don't hate each other in the way of a Dimitri/Felix, a Caspar/Petra, a Ferdinand/Hubert ( except for Lorenz but like, it's Lorenz ). They won't kill the other dad, but they'll sure as hell support each other like Lorenz and Ignatz or Marianne and Raphael. They might not start a revolution together but they will listen to the other even when it’s total heresy ( Leonie & Claude, such an incredible support :’) ) and help the other to reach their goal… I do agree with you it’s linked to not knowing each other before, but on that, isn’t knowing each other before more of a Lion thing than not knowing being a Deer thing? I don’t know, the BE are kind of a middle ground.

( Sorry for my ramblings- It's so fun talking about the deers )

AA anon thank you for the long ask!! Okay I'm gonna take this point by point under the readmore!

"My favorite deer ship s probably Leonie x Lysithea ( She litteraly say Leonie would make an incredible partner! Why do their support stop at B again?? )"

INCREDIBLY fair and based of you, lol, I read Lysithea as gay and it's 100% because of the support conversations she has with Leonie and Hilda (which to me implies an ADORABLE crush--Lysithea seems to genuinely respect and admire Hilda which is not something you'd expect from like, a surface level reading of their characters).

I'm gonna admit my own bias here in terms of canon text endings--my favorite Lysithea ending is her paired ending with Lorenz. It really reads like a queer platonic relationship to me--I don't really get romantic vibes from either of them (gay as they are) towards each other, but the commitment and care they have for each other genuinely warms my heart. Especially the fact that like, Lorenz is SO determined to ensure Lysithea takes care of herself and the ending doesn't really imply that she dies young (only that her health is delicate/poor) in comparison to others, and she and her family get to live the quiet life they want. Of course, as an aro/ace disabled person, I think it probably hits differently for me than people who aren't just because of the fact that after the most recent time I saw their support chain/got their ending I teared up a bit (and also why I'm now adoring your trans-aro-ace Claude).

ANYWAYS, I agree IS are cowards and that's why Edelgard is the only Lord who can romance both male/female Byleth.

"For the fandom I'll have to disagree, I think the Deers have a lot a queer content and it's amazing :]"

I probably didn't word what I meant completely lol correctly-- it's not that the Deer don't have a lot of queer content, it's just that overall, they have less content in general made for them then the Black Eagles and Blue Lions.

I do ALSO love so much of the queer content made for the Deers! The Three Houses fandom is amazing.

"My only thing might be how Claude has become the first character you think of when talking about bi fe3h character which is kinda telling how wlw are dismissed in the general fandom, but its better than some people insisting he's totally straight so eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

Okay, so I was kind of dancing around saying this to your last ask but you hit the nail on the head lol. I genuinely think the reason why the Deer might come across as less queer is because the "main ship" for them, so to speak, is the WLW pairing Hilda/Marianne.

Ironically when I think about bi fe3h characters my first thought is consistently Lindhardt?

"Oh and I think I disagree with Deers being the more family found-esq ( saying that bc it's a great subject of I discussion and I want to hear more about your opinion on the matter )

Okay so I definitely agree with you that they're all found family, explicitly in the text lol. What I meant in my statement that they're the most found-family-esq is that you get to see the development of ALL their relationships and becoming that family together on screen.

The Lions (a mess, and I love them), are pretty heavily involved with each other at the beginning of the game. A lot of the intrigue with them is the fact that they all have backstory stuff going on with each other (save for Ashe, I think, but we kill his dad on screen so). Mercedes and Annette went to Sorcery School together, Felix/Sylvain/Dimitri/Ingrid are all childhood friends with intense complications, and the trauma and deliberate kindness that brought together Dimitri and Dedue makes me emotional.

Similarly to them, the Black Eagles all have a history with each other (save for Dorothea) as well. There's the insane and amazing devotion between Edelgard and Hubert, Lindhardt and Caspar's childhood friendship, the onesided rivalry going on between Ferdinand and Edelgard since they were kids and Hubert's judgement of Ferdinand for it. Petra and Bernadetta, technically don't have pre-established relationships with the others, but in ways that are deliberately intense. Petra is blatantly a political hostage in the Academy Era in a way that really informs her relationship with Edelgard and Hubert even before they get to know her. Additionally Bernadetta's isolation creates a kind of infamy between her and the other nobles.

The Golden Deer, on the other hand, don't really have as many intense bonds going in (and thus, in my opinion, makes it easier for Byleth to integrate amongst them as an eventual equal). There's the preestablished dynamic of Lorenz being suspicious of and wanting to best Claude, but it's a recently developed dynamic, as Claude only appeared a year ago. This would be a bigger personal issue if he was leading a house like the Blue Lions or the Black Eagles (noble heavy as they are), but it's barely an issue in the Deer and not just because of the commoners. Hilda, Lorenz, Lysithea, and Marianne are not close. In all his supports with the three of them, Lorenz is the one reaching out because of his belief that their time in the Academy should be used to form better and closer connections with other nobles. There is nothing to imply that there was any substance to their pre-existing relationships. The only two who have anything to their relationship before the game starts, are Raph and Iganatz, who haven't spoken in years, mostly due to guilt on Ignatz's behalf for what happened to Raphael's family.

So as a result, you get to see the bonds being formed and deepened with the Golden Deer from scrap. Obviously some development happens off screen during the time skip, but other than that the Deer's found family forms and develops completely on screen, which is why I think it's the most found family-esq of the three.

In fact, it's a huge part of Claude's story. It's something you don't really notice in his route, but it's really clear when you don't pick him. While Edelgard and Dimitri kind of can't function and literally can't without Byleth's support, Claude has probably the highest survivability rate when you don't choose him of any character save technically Marianne. He survives the Blue Lions route, the Black Eagles route (if you spare him), and is implied to have survived the Silver Snow route. When he doesn't have Byleth, he still survives, so not choosing him isn't as dramatic. But it's easy to see that without Byleth as a teacher, he doesn't open up enough to the Deer. Dimitri and Edelgard have assured loyalty from their houses (even Ferdie and Felix) becuase of these pre-established relationships and positions, but Claude has to earn it. That's why Hilda, despite being his vassal, is recruit-able so long as you don't choose Black Eagles (the only route where he can die). Without Byleth, although the Deer do grow close, they don't do it as quick or as closely as they do with the Professor. Claude is a character who's never been able to truly rely on others, even if they care about him, and being able to rely on Byleth allows him to open up and rely on the Deer and truly trust them. I mean, Claude's two most relied upon people in the Deer (as seen in 3Hopes when he goes against Dimitri) are Hilda and Lorenz. I don't think people talk enough about how insane it is that Claude trusts Hilda Goneril with his life, considering he's an Alymran prince.

That's also why I think the Deer are so good for Byleth. I don't think any of the other route's are bad for Byleth at all, but I think the deer provide something to Byleth that neither the Lions or the Eagles can bring to her: a single of equivalency. Byleth is only slightly older than her students in the Academy Era and is in fact younger than most of them in the War Era, and yet it's only really with the Deer that she feels like she's amongst peers (whether it be because of the commoner/noble ratio or that she's as much of a stranger to them as they are to each other.) I mean, Claude is literally the only character who doesn't call refer to her by her Profession.

Anyways, TLDR: I think they're the most found family because a huge part of the Golden Deer route is them getting to know and love each other from scratch, and being a found family is a much bigger thematic aspect for them then it is for the other two houses.

"However, for me the deer and the diverse queer content around them is heavily a fandom thing. When I say the deer are "too straight for me", I meant it for the game directly. Like you have the Black Eagles where not only litteraly every characters is canon queer/has heavily subtext but has also its whole narrative drenched in queer metaphor! You have the Blue Lions where, while there's less "canon queer", you litteraly cannot say most of its members are straight with how heavy the subtext that's barely even subtext anymore is: there's 0 straight explanation for Felix crying more at Dimitri death than his wife, or him dying the same day as Sylvain because they can't live without each other."

"But for the Deers… You have Hilda/Marianne and Claude/Lorenz as the most popular one but while their relationship are so fascinating, when you only look only at the game, they feel too platonic? Especially compared to a Dedue/Dimitri ( like a family in private. took up a post at his grave for the most of his days. BURIED BESIDE EACHOTHER ) or a Ferdinand/Hubert ( rare A+ support, with blushing, their own little surname, Ferdinand/Edelgard support changing just to mention Ferdinand drinking coffee ). Otherwise you have Leonie/Lysithea which stop at B. You have Raphael/Ignatz where they decided to just push the relationship to make their ending all about Ignatz with his sister."

Okay, so I definitely agree with you that those things are canon queer and subtext, and that it's a shame they don't push the Raphael/Ignatz stuff and focus on Ignatz and Raph's sister (which is admittedly adorable to me).

Again, I'm aro/ace, so for me, queerness doesn't necessarily require romance as a prerequisite? Which is why I like Lorenz and Lysithea's ending, lol.

Hilda/Marianne in no way reads platonic to me, so I really disagree with you there. Hilda treats Marianne completely differently to how she treats everyone else in game. Their support chain is focused on how Hilda, who manipulates her way out of doing anything she doesn't want to, chooses to consistently over and over again do things for Marianne that she can't, and refuses to let Marianne feel bad over it. She leverages this into Marianne buying her pastries and them having a lunch date together. Their A support consists of Marianne questioning their regular dynamic of doing this and Hilda reassuring that she enjoys it so much she'd feel odd if it changed. They compliment each other to the point where Hilda starts to get a little flustered, and Hilda's even able to poke fun a little at Marianne and get Marianne to poke fun at her back. Marianne laughs at Hilda, and Hilda textually thinks it's adorable and can't even get mad at it because it's so cute. Marianne seems so genuinely happy and herself (even in negative ways!) with Hilda, and can rely on her in a way that doesn't make her feel inadequate or a burden.

I can understand as being able to view Claude/Lorenz as platonic, especially since I will never diverge from my Claude/Byleth endings, but I think they can also still be read pretty textually clear and potentially romantic. Part of this is Lorenz, who just, is very clearly gay to me? But again, part of this is the fact that a huge part of the Lorenz/Claude dynamic is them being viewed textually as equals, which is something that will and can never happen with Edelgard/Dimitri and their rival characters. Their support chain is all about getting to know and respect each other as they grow to care for one another, and while it isn't explicitly as romantic as Marianne/Hilda, I think their paired ending really speaks a lot for itself, in that Claude trusts Lorenz to be Fodlan's face of diplomacy towards Almyra. He trusts Lorenz to help him achieve his dream in the most direct way possible, something I think you can absolutely compare to his relationship with Byleth in their S-Support. Additionally about their support chain, their A-support really is about affirming to the player how close they've become, how fond they are of each other, and how neither of them can imagine the future of Fodlan without the other one in it. While there isn't a lot of direct text between Claude/Lorenz, I think there is absolutely enough subtext that you could read them romantically, especially from Lorenz's POV. The hard thing with this game is that each character needs to be able to be paired with Byleth, so they can never be textually obviously/blatantly in love with another character save for Byleth until their paired ending, and I think that absolutely holds doubly true for Lord characters, which is why I think Claude/Lorenz relies more on subtext.

I do think it's a shame that Lysithea doesn't have any A supports with women in her own house. Leonie like you mentioned is an adorable one, and I think Lysithea has a huge crush on Hilda in the ones with her, and there is definite potential in the one she has with Marianne (which in my opinion is a kinder, more gentle version of her supports with Ignatz).

I also think there's a few other support chains where there is a queer romance blossoming, they just don't get the chance to have an ending. A big one for me, personally, that I think deserved more, is Ignatz and Lorenz. I also think Leonie and Marianne's support chain was very cute, and deserved an A.

This is kind of what I was saying when I answered your last ask, I think, wherein the Deer have queer romance, but because the don't have a big blow up mlm ship (Claude is more often shipped with Dimitri + a lot of people aren't as fond of Lorenz as I think they should be lol), they kind of get sidelined as their big queer ship is WLW. And unfortunately in most fandoms, wlw ships are rarely as popular or have as much pushing force.

And also, I think, that the deer are queer without having as much romance. Their romantic pairings are far less set in store then the other two houses, I think, and part of that is because a lot of their endings read really queer platonic to me. Plus, a lot of the heavy romance lifting in the explicit text for a lot of supports tends to happen in the A/A+ region, and a several of the wlw/mlm golden deer pairings only go to B, which I think is a shame and forces them to rely more on subtext.

Additionally, because they're not the revolutionary or chivalry aligned House, a lot of their endings aren't written as...dramatically? Like I adore Felix/Sylvain to death (I have a print of them hanging next to my Claude one lol), but their childhood promise is very much the product of living in Faergus, similarly to how Hubert and Ferdinand's relationship is defined by them living in the Empire. I think because the Alliance politics are far less dramatic (or are far more dramatic in a visibly different way) the subtext for Claude and Lorenz's Romeo/Juliet for politics thing doesn't come across as huge as two characters who promised to die with each other as kids and keep it (insane I love them).

That's why in my original post I talk about loving how normal the Deer are, and I think ultimately a part of that comes from their setting: the Alliance. In my first play through, I specifically chose having my loyalties lie (in the initial meeting with the Lords) with the Alliance, because to me, someone who had no real context for the game, the Alliance was the closest thing to a democracy from what little we'd hard of each nation. Politics informs almost every aspect of the Golden Deer; sure it's played for angst and importance in the other two routes (Duscur/Sylvain's Crest Complex/Felix's problem with the chivalry system for the Blue Lions--with the latter two never being things that are textually resolved in the Kingdom's government--and Enbarr/those who Slither in the Dark for the Black Eagles), but Claude actually has to balance what other lords want in the War phase, and it's his ability to be so good at politicking that enables the Alliance to consistently remain neutral in the war. So a lot of the subtext stuff comes to fruition through the realm of politics in a way it doesn't entirely through the other two, if that makes sense. It's a huge gesture of love that Claude can trust Lorenz with his dream.

"The Deers are for me more like an actual close group of friend: their life are not going to revolve around each other like it does with the other houses, but they won't hesitate to come for that 5 years reunion to see the other. It's kinda like you say they're so normal in a good way! They tease each other but they don't hate each other in the way of a Dimitri/Felix, a Caspar/Petra, a Ferdinand/Hubert ( except for Lorenz but like, it's Lorenz ). They won't kill the other dad, but they'll sure as hell support each other like Lorenz and Ignatz or Marianne and Raphael. They might not start a revolution together but they will listen to the other even when it’s total heresy ( Leonie & Claude, such an incredible support :’) ) and help the other to reach their goal… I do agree with you it’s linked to not knowing each other before, but on that, isn’t knowing each other before more of a Lion thing than not knowing being a Deer thing? I don’t know, the BE are kind of a middle ground."

I both agree and disagree with what you've said here!

I think it's true, that in any route where you don't choose Byleth, the Deer are textually viewed much more as just close friends rather then found family, whereas I think if you chose their route they end up much closer (as I said above). I think the Black Eagles and Blue Lions have their lives, by nature, revolve around each other since they're literally all Nobles and thus part of the governning system of this world (with the exception of Dorothea). I think the Golden Deer have to make it a much more deliberate choice, and I do think it's something they do after the War in any route (assuming the majority of them have been allowed to live) because that sort of thing just forms a life long bond between people that's hard to shake without deliberate effort I can't imagine any of them truly wanting to put in.

They are normal! None of them hate each other! They don't have that sort of intensity, but they do have a lot of complexity that lends itself very well to found family. I think a big part of that complexity lends itself to the lack of killing (although I don't really think any of their parents deserve to be killed whether they've alive or dead?). The fact that Lorenz's dad has Claude's uncle killed (which when combined with Hilda, again, being a fucking Goneril is INSANE my man's two best friends are people who have reason to kill him for BOTH SIDES OF HIS ANCESTRY) and thus gets Raph's parents killed is something truly heartbreaking, and yet I think it's because there's no violence amongst each other or against the previous generation that characters like Claude (has had violence perpetuated against him for his heritage), Marianne (has had implied violence perpetuated against her for her crest), and Lysithea (has had violence perpetuated against her to get her second crest) are able to feel safe amongst the Deer. Violence is an intense choice, but I think lack of violence should also be viewed as something deliberate and chosen, esp. in the world of Three Houses. I mean, throughout Verdant Wind Claude is constantly complaining about the perpetuation of violence caused by the War! He's someone who deliberately chooses direct harm reduction. Although, to in fact speak of violence, I think it's absolutely insane that Hilda "I refuse to die for my friends" Goneril will willingly die for Claude "DO NOT DIE FOR MY SAKE FLEE PLEASE I'M BEGGING YOU RETREAT" von Riegan's sake.

I do think that the Golden Deer are the most similar to a modern queer friend group and thus would be the easiest to make a 1:1 comparison, but again the events of the game do kind of necessitate that they are found family because they go through a war together. Their group dynamics are probably the most influenced by Byleth (Dimitri and his relationships with others while "mad" of course, aside), and it's really hard to make generalizations about them because again, the fact that she is not there to facilitate these close bonds makes it a lot harder for them to be as close as they are before the war as they end up being, although even without Byleth I still think they're exceedingly close. But yes, I agree, they do not live in each other's pockets, which does not make them any less found family, but does, probably, make them healthier in modern context lol.

(As a side note about Byleth and the house leaders: I think what she visibly provides to Edelgard and Dimitri is a lot more obvious than what she provides to Claude. She helps the both of them in maintaining themselves and not loosing themselves to the burden of leadership and trauma. Claude, however, is a character who has been handling both of those things alone, and we are shown that he is capable of handling them alone without massive cracks appearing in Three Houses. Claude does not need Byleth to live, as the other two directly do. Byleth gives Claude someone consistent and trustworthy to rely on, which opens him up to being able to do it with the other members of his house far easier then he's able to otherwise.)

Anyways! I think the Golden Deer are very queer, just more subtextually so then the Black Eagles and Blue Lions. I personally view a lot of the straight endings, so to speak, as queerplatonic (again Lorenz/Lysithea and honestly Leonie/Ignatz). Romance is a pretty easy metric to view queer storytelling through, but I don't think I'd see Sylvain as any less of a queer character if he didn't have his paired ending with Felix because of how his story is written. In a similar way, I think characters like Ignatz (wanted to be a painter, but it's not what his family wants for him; yearns to be creative and is self conscious about people thinking it'll interfere in his duties and has to learn to accept himself and his true dreams) and Marianne (sees herself as a monster that other people won't accept if they knew the true her and what she's hiding) are also queer without needing to be in romances, which is why the fandom gets a lot out of them subtextually.

Acceptance, I think, can be viewed as a very queer theme, and I think it's a prominent one within the Deer.

#twila talks #the golden deer #fe3h #verdant wind #claude von riegan #hilda valentine goneril #lorenz hellman gloucester #marianne von edmund #ignatz victor #raphael kirsten #leonie pinelli #lysithea von ordelia #claurenz #marihilda #thank you again for the ask anon I really enjoy discussing this with you!!#I don't think we necessarily disagree so much as have different interpretations of the text and i've enjoyed hearing yours and sharing mine #we needed more wlw stuff in the golden deer supports!!! in the game!!!#everyone should be bisexual in fire emblem it's a dating sim first and sexy chess second skdfhskjdfh

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gristlegrinder · 5 months ago

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late night ttrpg gming thoughts about stuff i want to do (whining like a sad little dog)

Like, okay. It’s been way too long since I’ve played or run a game in the Chronicles system and I keep thinking about it. I have so many ideas (for both characters and campaigns) that I’ve been holding onto for years and I want to finally actualize some of them. It’s just, like— so games-wise, if I ever got over my nerves and started running stuff again:

1. The campaign I’ve come the closest to actually GMing but keep kicking my feet on is a Changeling chronicle— Changeling being a dark fantasy game about people reclaiming their trauma narrative from the faerie kingdom they were trapped in— with kind of a southern gothic spin. You know, that kind of folklore vibe, but set in the Blue Ridge Mountains and playing with family and place and being queer in a rural small town. This one’s near and dear to my heart, and I already have some people who’ve called dibs on being in it if I ever get my shit together, but I keep stalling out trying to connect some of the dots in my brain.

2. Likewise, my other big Changeling dream campaign is something that plays with the Briarnet lore— the Briarnet being a variant of the liminal faerie borderlands that takes a cyberpunk edge, quite literally being a web of unreality existing in the Internet itself. I don’t know how else to describe it. It rules. Do I have a specific campaign in mind? No! Do I want some y2k-flavored technofaerie bullshit occupying my brainspace more than it already does? Absolutely! And I think it would be a fun crossover with the Hunter books, as your local advocate for Network Zero (the forum guys) being the best monster hunter conspiracy. (Sorry, Knights of St. Adrian, you’re a close second in my heart).

3. Then there’s the Vampire game I’ve been sitting on. Vampires are probably the most self-explanatory of the group, and Requiem has less internal worldbuilding to introduce than Masquerade IMO, making it a decent introductory point for new players, but vampires are also vampires. My dream Vampire game, for years now, has been a murder mystery noir inspired by fuzzy 1970s giallo film aesthetics, where you and the rest of the group are trying to prove your innocence against the murder and diablerie of a prominent elder amongst the kindred. In a perfect world, I’d want this to have enough players where one PC would actually be the true killer, working against everybody else and gradually killing other characters the longer they’re left alive, but PvP campaigns are fairly difficult and prone to more emotional bleed (especially when Vampire is a game with a lot of direct mental manipulation skills) and I haven’t fully worked out how I’d manage it safely. But I want it so bad.

4. And Demon is the game I used to run for ~4 years, and I miss it so so much. It might be my favorite of the games? It’s an espionage thriller that puts angels and demons in sort of a dystopian Matrix conflict, with the God Machine and Its agents being operatives enforcing systems of reality and demons fighting for their independence and free will. The main issue is that I made the rookie mistake of using most of my good ideas for the first campaign, plus the most established canon setting (kisses Splintered City: Seattle on the cheek), so I’ve been struggling to think of what I want to do next.

I think a series of smaller, serialized-crime-show heists would be fun, focused on destabilizing infrastructure and completing one objective. Not my usual style, which leans more politicking and social deduction, but I feel good enough within the system to not be intimidated by a more action-heavy setup, and organized heists are REALLY fun to plan around.

Setting is the hardest part of this one, since I can’t default to Seattle again, but I’ve been considering something drenched in midcentury Cold War aesthetics, playing up those spy thriller angles— whether that’s white-picket suburban American hell or urban Eastern Europe on the edge of collapse. Knowing me, it’d be something grungy and Soviet, but it could go either way.

5. Wild card option— Beast is really unpopular as a gameline for various reasons but I can fix her. I like to advertise her as The Magnus Archives before there were The Magnus Archives: it’s a game about people who are possessed by archetypal embodiments of carnal fears, who are really also just themselves reflected in darkness, which then drive them to hunger. It’s kind of just a media match made in heaven, besides the families not really lining up right. This was actually the first chronicles game I played in, even if I’ve never run it, so I have a soft spot for it and I think it could be fun to do stylish supernatural horror set in 1920s Weimar Germany. Play up the Primordial Dream as a kind of Expressionistic landscape of growing social anxieties. I didn’t take multiple seminars studying German Expressionism and Fritz Lang in college for nothing, and this lets me recycle some, clears throat, unused concepts I was waiting to show off in my old Demon game.

6. And then finally. Sighs loudly. A Victorian-era gothic comedy(?) with Geist also speaks to me, with Geist being a game about should-be-dead people who bargain with Death for more time among the living, have buddy comedy shenanigans with the death spirit keeping their corpse functioning, and ideally do some kind of ghost socialism (I am not joking). This one ranks the lowest because I have absolutely no vision for the plot, just vibes. This is a really bad way of advertising Geist and I promise it’s cool and atmospheric and haunting but sometimes you just want gay dandies having seances and trying to dance around all of their zombie problems to maintain some social decorum.

And like those aren't all of my dreams (Mummy lives rent free in my brain thematically but plotting for Mummy is scary and intimidating; I’ve wanted to do a fucked up splattery survival horror for a while but don’t have a good system in mind; my more unweildy Geist vision is an Underworld campaign traveling to the Ocean of Fragments to find the end of the end; Oops! Aliens, Somehow! despite there not being solid or consistent alien rules), but they’re the ones I go back to most frequently. I really like doing tabletop stuff! I consider myself a solid GM for this system and have a lot of fun playing with it! I want to do it!

But arrrrrRRRGHGGHHHHHhhhhhhhhh manifestation is HARD and my untreated brain stuff has been destroying my wretched being and part of me keeps telling myself i should probably focus more on Curseborne once that all starts coming out for realsies and—

#my stomach hurts too which is not helping with the very jittery energy rn #this is embarrassingly dorky. autism fixation moment.

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huttease · 4 years ago

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Do you think Lucas is down with the gays?

#he wrote some pretty iconic gays imo #Luke twink Skywalker #leía-sbian organa #obi wan #yes he’s gay and really repressed #but do you think that was on purpose #or does his silly writing result in queer coded #no sorry queer drenched characters #in the few bts ive seen him in he’s seem like a chill dude #if a bit awkward and shy #like he doesn’t seem homophobic to me #but maybe I just don’t know enough about the guy

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americanphysco · 2 years ago

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I'm sure you've said something about it already when the news first dropped but now that an episode is out I just HAVE to know what ur take on the interview w a vampire show is. do I need to hate it like the movie because I trust ur opinion or are u like. neutral. do u think you'll watch it? you're the leading authority on this To Me

okay first off hii tee I'm sorry I've been such an offline blogger recently I've just been working sooooo much 😔. how're you!! how've you been!

but as for the iwtv show. it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. honestly, as somebody who desperately wants more queer vampire media, it pisses me off that they've decided to make a show based off a violently racist (and poorly written) film rather than create a new and interesting story about complex queer characters of color. it feels like they're trying to sweep all the "questionable/problematic" elements of the original under the rug, and I know that this show will only further cement iwtv's role as """""iconic queer cinema"""""", which is extremely upsetting to me. the film's managed to remain a cultural juggernaut for so long with little to no criticism despite being drenched in a predatory portrayal of queerness, anti-blackness, and pedophilia, and I know that the show having interracial mlm main characters will only help white queer fans of the film to defend it and the harm its done. and, while I'm not sure who is apart of the writing team, it doesn't sit right with me that the showrunner is not a person of color. like. it'd be one thing if a queer person of color wanted to reclaim iwtv and reinvent it as a piece of media they could see themselves in, but that's clearly not the case seeing as the showrunner is a white man. so it makes things even worse for me. idk. I have no doubt that the show is well done, but I just can't see myself watching it because I'd be unable to distance it from the abhorrent movie its connected to. I have some more thoughts on the differences between what I know about the show and the movie, but I'll spare you from those because they're less serious than things like the inherent racism of the source material. I will say though I'm nervous for how claudia is going to be portrayed, seeing as she appears to be older than she is in the film (and god knows that the movie had an awful time depicting her character and her relationship w louie) :/ if you watch it pls lmk your thoughts on it. but I don't think I'll ever bring myself to sit through it.

#asks #tee 👕

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undercookeddaichi · 4 years ago

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all the queer kids join the volleyball club

[ kageyama being soft and hinata being baby, and me being a slut for them both ]

pairing: kageyama tobio x hinata shoyo

warnings: smut, nsfw, first-time

word count: 6.5k

xxx

“Hinata, is everything okay?”

Suga jogs over to the heap of orange hair and nerves quivering at the bench and chugging his water bottle so quickly Suga worries he might choke. Hinata’s entire body flinches as Suga’s soft hand comes down on his shoulder.

“Yes! I-I’m fine! I’m sorry!”

He drops his water bottle and practically shrieks as he dives after it.

Suga runs a doubtful hand through his silky grey hair. Hinata’s not acting normal, especially on a Friday afternoon practice when the prelims aren’t for a while and there’s no upcoming practice match to be stressing over. He hasn’t acted like this since their first match with Aoba Johsai a while back. Letting out a sweet and breathy sigh, Suga shakes his head as he reaches for his own water bottle.

“That was a perfect toss, dumbass. Why didn’t you hit it?” Kageyama growls, pointing at Hinata but dropping his hand when he sees how scrunched Shoyo’s expression is. The blush etched into Hinata’s pale face and the way his small fingers tense around the ball make Kageyama’s heart drop.

This was going to be worse than he could have ever imagined.

“I’m sorry!” Hinata yelps.

He smacks his palms against his cheeks, somehow making them redder than they already are. Only Kageyema can tell that Hinata’s on the verge of tears.

Fuck.

Kageyama grinds his teeth together as he rips his eyes away from his boyfriend to give Asahi a toss. He’ll have to worry about Hinata after practice.

Fuck.

“Why don’t you sit down for a while, Hinata. There’s no use practicing spikes with your nerves this high.” Daichi pats Hinata’s shoulder and nearly sends him into a panic attack at the touch.

“Right!” Hinata nods immediately.

The rest of the team stares. Hinata would never agree to sit out so eagerly during a practice.

Annoyance boils over inside Kageyama’s chest, and he resists the urge to drag his boyfriend by his sleeve back onto the court and call him a dumbass and tell him to get control of himself and make him keep spiking and remind him it’s only a few more hours now… But the annoyance bubbles into a gentle sympathy as he watches the anxiety rippling through Hinata’s body. He can’t help but feel guilty.

No matter how he looks at it, this is sort of Kageyama’s fault to begin with.

The rest of practice passes agonizingly slow, Kageyama managing to make perfect tosses despite the adrenaline in his blood and thoughts on his mind and Hinata doing all sorts of push-ups and jumping jacks and stretches in the corner of the gym to try to calm himself.

Kageyama swallows as his gaze wanders to Hinata’s ass. He cusses at the heat that trickles into his stomach.

Not yet.

Daichi claps his hands together. “Alright! Nice work today! Let’s clean up!”

Kageyama heads to the storage closet to grab a mop, but as he steps through the door, Hinata slams into him.

“I-I’m sorry! I was-” Hinata stutters when he looks up and realizes it’s Kageyama he accidentally ran into. “I w-was getting a mop…”

“I’ve got it.” Kageyama mutters.

Hinata looks away, down at his feet and squeezes his hands into fists.

Kageyama doesn’t think as he wraps his arms around his boyfriend’s shoulders and pulls him against his chest. He nuzzles his nose against Hinata soft curls, inhaling the sweet smell of tangerines and sweat and spice that he’s grown to love.

“K-Kageyama..?” Hinata whimpers against his chest.

Kageyama rubs his thumbs into Hinata’s stiff shoulders, coaxing his boyfriend’s body to relax. “I’m going to take care of you tonight, Shoyo.”

Kageyama feels Hinata’s body freeze for a moment as if he stopped breathing, but the tension abruptly drops from his shoulders and he melts into Kageyama’s arms, inhaling deeply as he burrows his face into the comfort that is Kageyama.

“Come on, let’s go finish up. I’ll meet you in the clubroom.” Kageyama says quietly against Hinata’s ear, squeezing his boyfriend one last time before letting him go.

Hinata looks up at him with soft cheeks reddened by a different kind of blush and bright eyes that burn with all sorts of emotions Kageyama can’t exactly put his finger on.

He jerks his head away at the swelling in his chest that he still hasn’t completely gotten used to, swelling caused by how fucking cute Shoyo is, how it makes his breath hot and his heart feel like it’s on fire. He’s still not used to how fucking gay he is, either.

“C-Cutie,” Kageyama mutters.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Hm? If it’s nothing, then don’t say it.”

Hinata takes the mop and goes out to join the rest of them in cleaning up.

At least he’s back to normal. Kageyama thinks, trying to rub the blush out of his face.

It’s almost frightening how easy it is for Kageyama to calm his boyfriend, though it’s not for lack of practice. He’s been responsible for keeping Hinata’s nerves under control since their first match before they had even voiced their feelings for one another.

It was harder then, finding the right words to say or thing to do that might make Hinata stop fucking shaking, but after Hinata leapt into his arms and kissed him in the empty clubroom the night they defeated Aoba Johsai, Kageyama learned that physical touch was the quickest way to alleviate Hinata’s anxiety. Physical touch that involves rubbing his hands against Hinata’s soft back, playing with his orange hair, kissing the top of his head, holding him close enough that nothing in the entire fucking world could penetrate Kageyama’s hold on the one person who has been his reason since he first saw him in junior high.

Hinata has always been Kageyama’s reason. For everything. Why Kageyama went to Karasuno, why Kageyama changed so drastically as a setter, why Kageyama realized he was gay, why Kageyama gets out of bed in the morning, why Kageyama learned how equally fucking shitty and spectacular falling in love is.

He’s never liked the idea of having to come out, because it’s Hinata and it’s only Hinata and it will only ever be Hinata, and being gay is just a minor detail that people have way too many unnecessary feelings about. Kageyama’s in love with Hinata. That’s all anyone will ever need to know.

And now, the night before Hinata’s birthday, Kageyama’s present is fucking Hinata into oblivion.

It’s what Hinata’s been asking for, every time he’d go down on Kageyama and every time Kageyama’s fingers were in his ass and when he was straddling Kageyama’s waist as they made out for what seemed like hours, tasting each other’s lips until the sun went down and all that was left was the sound of cicadas and warm air at the window and rich yellow sunlight casting shadows on the sheets they laid on. He would beg for his boyfriend to be inside him, widening his eyes and licking his lips with the same look he uses when silently asking for a toss, a look that Kageyama wanted to give into more than anything. But he wasn’t ready. Not yet. Not until now. And it’s why Hinata’s drenched in anxiety today, even though he’s the one who’s been insisting.

Even after weeks of looking up articles and watching videos and reading forums with the fear of accidentally hurting Hinata in mind, Kageyama’s nervous as hell, too, but Hinata is supposed to be excited. Shouldn’t he be?

Kageyama’s gaze doesn’t wander far from his boyfriend while they put everything away.

Tsukki starts to say something snarky about Hinata needing to throw up, but Kageyama steps between them and glares up before he can, gripping Hinata’s shoulders behind him. With a smirk, Tsukki adjusts his glasses but lets it go.

“The king is a little overbearing today, don’t you think?” He mumbles to Yamaguchi.

As they gather in the clubroom to change, Nishinoya throws himself onto Hinata’s shoulders, Tanaka appearing close behind.

“Shoyo!!!” Noya yells, punching Hinata’s shoulder in succession. “Happy early birthday!!! Tanaka and I got you something!”

“W-what?! Y-you did?!!” Hinata flinches but his face lights up at the sparkle in Noya’s eyes. No one could resist smiling at that.

“Yea!! Here!!”

He hands Hinata a slightly crinkled gift bag with tissue paper and bits of newspaper stuffed into it to hide whatever the present is. Hinata shakes it next to his ear, quivering with excitement when he hears something sliding around.

“You can’t tell what it is by shaking the bag, dumbass.” Kageyama grumbles.

Hinata ignores his boyfriend, instead jumping up and down to expel some of his pent-up excitement and proclaiming, “It’s a volleyball! I can tell, it’s definitely a volleyball!”

Noya and Tanaka burst out in laughter. Suga leans into Daichi’s shoulder to suppress his own chuckle, and Tsukki and Yamaguchi hold back tears.

“Dumbass! A volleyball couldn’t fit in that!” Kageyama yells.

“It could! You don’t know, Bakageyama!”

Hinata furrows his eyebrows at his boyfriend in defiance before turning his attention back to his gift. Kageyama makes sure to maintain the scowl on his face so no one can tell how fucking cute he thinks that was.

“Go on, open it,” Tanaka slaps his hand against Hinata’s back, hard.

“Okay!”

Hinata doesn’t hesitate to tear the tissue paper and toss it on the floor, yanking his gift out of the bag for everyone to see with a smile that makes Kageyama have to physically restrain himself from scooping up his boyfriend and smothering him with kisses.

“Oooh!! It’s a shirt! A volleyball shirt!” Hinata unfolds the blue fabric so he can read what the characters say on the front.

Great talents mature late.

“It’s so cool! Nishinoya senpai, Tanaka senpai, thank you!”

Noya and Tanaka throw themselves onto Hinata once again, punching him lightly and ruffling his soft hair and laughing, beaming with the pride that comes from seniority.

Suga and Daichi pat Hinata’s shoulder and wish him a happy birthday as they leave together holding hands, Fridays being their date nights. Yamaguchi gives Hinata a small container of home-made rice balls before Tsukki drags them out, probably to play video games at Yamaguchi’s house, and Noya gives Hinata a high-five from atop Asahi’s back as they leave together, as well.

Ukai explicitly warned them about relationships among teammates, but here they are, managing to have four couples on one team. Noya always jokes that all the queer kids join the volleyball club, and given the number of couples they know on other teams, he’s not wrong. Oikawa and Iwaizumi, Bokuto and Akaashi, Kuroo and Kenma, Lev and Yaku, Ushijima and Tendou. Asahi and Nishinoya, Tsukki and Yamaguchi, Daichi and Suga, even Kiyoko and Yachi. And now Kageyama and Hinata.

Unlike the others, though, Kageyama and Hinata decided they didn’t want the rest of the team to know when they started dating and took precautions to keep it that way. Except it backfired when the fighting and insults and perceived annoyance with one another got worse, worse to the point that Suga knew there was something else going on. But they don’t know that.

“Oi, Kageyama,” Tanaka whispers loudly, pulling Kageyama aside once it’s just them and Hinata left in the clubroom. “Consider this your early birthday present.”

“What?”

Before Kageyama can object, Tanaka shoves a small box into his hand and smirks as he leaves, waving a final goodbye to Hinata. Kageyama nearly has a heart attack when he looks down at the box of condoms in his palm.

“Kageyama,” Hinata adjusts the strap of his bag and pops up behind his boyfriend trying to see what Tanaka gave him, but Kageyama stuffs it into his pocket before he can.

“I-It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

“It’s not nothing! What is it? What did Tanaka give you?” Hinata reaches for Kageyama’s pocket but he steps out of reach.

“Nothing.”

“Let me see!”

Despite his best effort to dodge him, Hinata sneaks in between Kageyama’s arms and snags the small box in his pocket. The blush on his cheeks is brighter than his hair when realization sets in.

“Oh.”

“Yeah…”

They stand for a moment in silence, neither wanting to verbalize what they’re both thinking. Kageyama steps forward and starts to say something, anything to end the silence and make the blushes on their cheeks fade, but Hinata slips the box into his own bag and puts his hands against Kageyama’s chest to stop him. Kageyama freezes as his boyfriend rests his head against him.

“Kageyama,” he says softly. “Your heart’s beating too fast.”

For a long time, they stay just like this. Kageyama rests his hand against Hinata’s hair with as much tenderness as if he were worried about waking him up. Hinata wraps his arms around Kageyama’s waist and drinks in his scent. Just like this.

At some point, Hinata lets go but only to intertwine their fingers as they finally leave the clubroom.

The sun is low in the sky, drenching their skin in golden light and making Hinata’s caramel eyes sparkle brighter than anything Kageyama’s ever seen before.

“You’re… beautiful.” He says as coherently as he can.

Hinata looks up at him with wide eyes. He squeezes Kageyama’s hand tighter.

“N-no, you are.” He looks away.

They’re still really bad at complimenting one another, even though Kageyama’s sure he could come up with a thousand things that he absolutely adores about his boyfriend.

“Do you wanna get something to eat before we go back to my house?” Kageyama asks.

Hinata nods, and that’s that.

Anything, Shoyo. Do you know that? Anything for you.

They slide into a booth at a place that’s only five minutes from Kageyama’s house and order enough food for five people knowing that it still won’t be enough for them.

Feeling more at ease, Hinata starts filling in his boyfriend on all the news with Kenma and the Nekoma team and even Bokuto (who texted him a few days ago), and his younger sister’s junior volleyball team and how he thinks his Mom is making him his favorite meal for his birthday.

Maybe on the outside, it doesn’t look like Kageyama is paying any attention with his occasional nods and grunts as he sips the glass of strawberry milk he got, but he is. He really is. He eats up every perfect word that comes out of Hinata’s perfect mouth and stores it away to cherish and remember, because what’s important to Hinata is important to him.

“So,” Hinata swallows and shifts in his seat. “D-Did you tell Tanaka? About, you know, us?”

Kageyama goes rigid in his seat.

“No, I have no clue why he… Why he…” He trails off, but they both know what he’s trying to say.

“It’s because you’re always staring at me at practice.”

“No, I’m not. And besides, I have to watch you when we’re practicing. How else am I supposed to toss to you, dumbass.”

“Well I didn’t tell him!”

“Maybe- Maybe we’re being too obvious.” Kageyama says, a little bit of heat tinting his face.

“Hm? How? I’ve even started glaring at you when you’re not looking.”

“Dumbass! That’s unnecessary. We’re definitely being too obvious.”

“Do you think everyone else knows, too?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Hinata stares at his hands on the table and Kageyama looks at a street sign through the window.

“H-How did he know about... tonight.” Hinata mumbles.

Kageyama looks back at his boyfriend, his heart swelling in a familiar way at his furrowed eyebrows and the pink on his nose. He puts his hand over Hinata’s and moves his thumb in a gentle, circular motion against his skin.

“I don’t think he does. He probably just assumed we would…” He swallows. “It’s okay, Hinata. They were going to find out anyway.”

Hinata nods but doesn’t look at Kageyama.

“That’s why you were nervous today, right?” Kageyama says.

But then their food finally comes and they’re distracted for a few minutes as they eat, though neither of them eat as quickly as they usually do. Hinata sips a little bit of tea and clears his throat.

“Yeah,” is all he says.

Kageyama nods.

“You don’t have anything to be nervous about. I, um, I did my research.” He sounds like such a fucking nerd when he says it that way.

“It isn’t like volleyball, Bakageyama!”

Kageyama gets distracted by how Hinata’s hair bounces as he speaks.

“I know that! But I just- wanted to be prepared.”

Hinata’s grumbles something (and it’s cute as fuck) but continues to eat.

“Hinata,” Kageyama starts. “You know we don’t have to do this. We can wait until you’re-”

“No. I’m ready. I want you. Tonight.”

For a moment, Kageyama watches for any sign of hesitation on his boyfriend’s face, but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Hinata look so resolute about anything. Maybe he looks like this when he’s about to spike… Kageyema nods once. He thinks about how badly he wants to lean over and kiss the top of Hinata’s perfect nose.

They finish all of the food they bought as expected, gather their things, and start off to Kageyama’s house. Despite being in a somewhat angsty mood, Hinata grabs Kageyama’s hand the moment they step out onto the sidewalk. Kageyama presses a kiss against the top of his head. They’re both anxious, that’s all.

“Let’s watch a movie!” Hinata decides as they put their things down and take off their shoes at the door. Kageyama’s mom is traveling this weekend so they have the house to themselves.

While Hinata looks for something to put on the TV, Kageyama changes into a black t-shirt and the sweatpants that Hinata once told him he looked “really good” in.

He just likes it because he can see my dick. Kageyama thinks.

He doesn’t wear anything underneath them and Hinata seems to notice when Kageyama comes back into the living room by the way he licks his lips.

As the movie starts playing, Hinata takes up his favorite position against Kageyama’s lap, with his boyfriend’s arms around his neck and his cheek against his chest. Kageyama assumes it’s his favorite position because he’s in perfect view of his dick and can hear Kagayama’s heartbeat in his ear.

They only ever watch about thirty minutes before getting occupied with other things, but today it takes longer and Hinata only starts brushing his lips against Kageyama’s neck and jaw once the movie is almost over. Hinata places soft kisses along his boyfriend’s collarbone and starts nibbling, too, leaving small red marks along Kageyama’s skin. He kisses and bites up his neck until he gets to his lips. Kageyama accepts Hinata’s mouth against his hungrily and lets his boyfriend’s tongue run along his own and against his teeth, shuddering as Hinata’s fingers find the edge of his t-shirt.

Hinata traces Kageyama’s v-line and drags his hands up Kageyama’s torso, over his muscles and around to his back and across his belly button and up to his chest where he gently squeezes his boyfriend’s nipples.

Kageyama doesn’t like to moan, he doesn’t like the feeling of needing to moan, but Hinata makes it impossible not to. He’s never even dated someone before Kageyama, and yet Hinata knows exactly how to move his fingers over his body in just the right way, in just the right fucking places.

As Hinata climbs onto Kageyama’s lap fully, straddling him in a dangerous way, Kageyama fits his hands on either side of Hinata’s waist. He presses his fingertips into his boyfriend’s soft flesh to hold him in place. That simple touch alone elicits a breathy moan from Hinata. Kageyama can’t help the way those sounds make his dick hot below his waistband, and Hinata knows that, too.

Their kiss becomes rougher and Hinata’s hands more frantic and Kageyama’s grip tighter, but he doesn’t stop Hinata when he starts to grind his ass against his sweatpants. Kageyama lets out a low groan at that, biting down on Hinata’s lip and making him moan even louder. The sound makes Kageyama’s length fully hard, and he can feel Hinata’s dick pressing against his own.

He stops Hinata from grinding into him anymore and breaks from the kiss, putting his lips roughly against Hinata’s neck and leaving his own marks. He lets every moment at practice today that he wanted to slam Hinata against a wall and kiss him until he was breathless control his body, as he tastes every inch of his boyfriend that he can and cherishes the desperate noises in his ear. Hinata tries to hump into Kageyama again, but he’s stopped by Kageyama’s grip.

Instead, he reaches for Kageyama’s waistband and slides his hand down until he feels Kageyama’s deliciously long length against his skin. Kageyama can’t suppress the moan that bubbles out of his throat as Hinata delicately runs his fingers up and down him, somehow making him even harder in the most painful yet fucking amazing way.

“S-Shoyo…” He whispers, tossing his head back against the couch and enjoying the feeling of his boyfriend’s skin on his.

But when Hinata tries to remove his sweatpants completely, he grabs his hands by his wrists, puts them around his neck, and hitches his legs around his waist before standing up.

“Not here,” he whispers into Hinata’s ear.

He turns off the TV on his way to the staircase, neither of them having paid any attention to the movie from the start. From the corner of his eye, he vaguely registers that it’s about 11:15 PM.

Hinata doesn’t resist as Kageyama carries him like that upstairs to his bedroom, all the while biting and kissing Kageyama’s neck and scraping his nails against the back of his t-shirt until Kageyama rests him on the bed.

“It’s your birthday, dumbass. I’m supposed to be making you feel good.” Kageyama mutters.

He turns the lamp next to his bed on, and then reaches for another switch. A vine of fairy lights around his bed shine to life. Hinata gasps softly, his whole face brightening with the decorations, and that look alone gives Kageyama enough dopamine for the rest of his fucking life.

He cups Hinata’s chin as he crawls onto the bed beside him, and slides Hinata’s sweatshirt up and over his body, tossing it onto the floor. Climbing over him, Kageyama can feel the bulge in Hinata’s pants against his own. Hinata moans at the feeling, but he’s silenced by Kageyama’s lips on his.

Kissing is one of the best fucking things in the world according to Kageyama. Specifically kissing Hinata. If he let him, Kageyama could lose himself in the feeling of Hinata’s soft lips moving against his own, the taste of his sweet mouth, the quiet gasps that blossom from his throat when Kageyama pulls back for a moment for hours and hours and hours, and he usually does. But he knows Hinata’s desperate for more tonight.

He gazes down at Hinata’s bare abdomen, greedily taking in all of his pale, well-muscled build and feeling pride bubbling in his chest knowing that Hinata is his. Anything, everything, beyond everything for Shoyo. In this life and the next life and the life after. Shoyo, Shoyo, Shoyo.

He takes Hinata’s nipples in his fingers and relishes in the borderline scream that erupts from Hinata as the smaller boy arches his back and bites his lip at the sensation. He smirks at how sensitive Hinata is today. That’s a good sign.

“K-Kageyama, that- feels so… g-good,” he manages to say.

“It’s supposed to.”

Kageyama’s smirk widens and he pushes his mouth down against Hinata’s once again. His hands wander over Hinata’s quivering body, feeling his boyfriend turn into a mess beneath him already and loving every moment of it.

Kageyama pulls back from the kiss and stops torturing Hinata’s nipples, resulting in a groan from Hinata, before yanking his own shirt off. He starts pulling Hinata’s shorts off, but Hinata puts his hand on Kagayama’s chest.

“I-It’s my turn,” he says, somewhat out of breath.

Kageyama doesn’t have time to react before Hinata scrambles out from under him and latches his fingers onto Kageyama’s waistband. The look he gives Kageyama screams Off without needing to say it.

Kageyama slides off the bed and faces Hinata as he pulls his sweatpants down, kicking them off completely. Hinata’s eyes glaze over as the way Kageyama’s dick springs up entrances him. (Kageyama sort of did that on purpose because he likes the way Hinata’s mesmerized by his length, but he would never say it out loud.)

As soon as he climbs back onto the bed, Hinata pounces on him with such eagerness that Kageyama falls flat onto his back. Hinata positions himself with his mouth just above Kageyama’s dick and his ass up in the air, his hot breath brushing against Kageyama’s length.

“Please.” He murmurs.

Kageyama’s eyes are wide as he nods.

He doesn’t have enough time to even blink before Hinata’s tongue is against his shaft, leaving a wet trail from his base to his head and eliciting a sinful noise from his throat. Hinata’s small fingers close around the base and pump him slowly while his lips close around his head. Kageyama resists the urge to throw his head back and squeeze his eyes shut, instead forcing himself to watch his boyfriend. Hinata gazes back at him through his eyelashes.

Soon after they started dating, they learned they shared the desire to maintain eye contact. Always.

Hinata’s tongue swirls around his head in the most illegal fucking ways, mixing his pre-cum with his saliva and sucking him like his entire life’s purpose to suck Kageyama Tobio dry, all the while his hands feeling up the rest of his length. Kageyama’s fingers find Hinata’s hair and he tugs him wildly, desperate for more.

“Fuck.” Kageyama groans.

His hips fuck up into Hinata’s mouth, and Hinata takes him so fucking well as his dick slams into the back of his throat.

“Y-you’re… so… fucking good, Shoyo. You’re so good for me.”

Hinata whimpers, gagging on Kageyama’s length but continuing to run his tongue along whatever skin he can find and pumping his base with his hands.

Kageyama’s too close for comfort, he knows, but as much as he wants to cum right here and right now and let himself explode into Hinata’s throat, that’s not Hinata’s birthday present. He relaxes his hips and pushes Hinata’s shoulders back gently.

He can’t help but groan at how beautiful Hinata looks with his dick sliding out of his mouth, gleaming with his saliva.

Hinata breathes raggedly and wipes his mouth with his arm. He shakily pulls his shorts and briefs down, discarding them off the bed and climbs over his boyfriend. Kageyama runs a finger up Hinata’s dick, and while the smaller boy lets out a high-pitched moan, he guides Kageyama’s hand away.

“I d-don’t wanna wait anymore.” He breathes. “I want my birthday present. I want you inside me, Kageyama. Now.”

Kageyama watches Hinata closely again, and he only finds pure want in his brown eyes. They’re really doing this.

“Do you have lube? I brought my own, but it’s in my bag downstairs.”

“No, yes, I have some. Hold on,” Kageyama pulls open the drawer of his nightstand and nearly drops the small bottle as he pulls it out. “Um, it’s strawberry. I hope that’s okay. It sort of reminded me of you...”

“Bakageyama. Of course it’s okay.”

“R-Right. How do you, um, how do you wanna do this?”

Hinata answers instantly, like he’s been waiting for someone to ask. “I wanna ride you.”

Kageyama swallows, his dick twitching at the words. He nods.

Struggling to open the cap at first, he finally pops it open and lets a generous amount fall into his palm. He lathers his hands in it, making sure that his index, middle, and ring fingers on his right hand are drenched the most.

“Like this,” Hinata says. He pulls Kageyama up into a sitting position with his legs wide and moves himself so that he’s sitting with his back resting against Kageyama’s chest, his head draped over Kageyama’s shoulder. He spreads his knees and shivers at the feeling of Kageyama’s wet dick pushing against his ass.

Guiding Kageyama’s fingers down to his entrance, he gives him a slight nod.

Kageyama feels around the area for a moment, getting used to the feeling of the lube on his fingers and watching Hinata’s reactions carefully as he pushes a fingertip against his hole. He slides a hesitant finger about a centimeter inside of him.

Hinata grimaces, letting out a painful moan, but nods again after a moment. Kageyama slides in deeper and then stops. Hinata moans and breathes, nodding when he’s ready for more. They continue like this until his finger is fully submerged into Hinata.

“A-Another,” Hinata groans.

Kageyama gently pushes his middle finger up into his boyfriend, making sure to be just as cautious as with the first finger even though he’s taking this one better. When he starts to move them, Hinata snaps his eyes shut and seethes through his teeth, but he bites against Kageyama’s neck when Kageyama stops.

“K-Keep going… It feels… so good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Y-Yes. I’m just g-getting used t-to it. Don’t s-stop, Tobio...”

Kageyama growls softly hearing his name in Hinata’s breathy voice, and he immediately begins to pump his fingers inside his boyfriend. Hinata makes all sorts of amazing noises right into Kageyama’s ears as he stretches him out. Adding a third finger makes Hinata’s body convulse, and he cries out, but Kageyama can tell it’s a sound of pleasure. His patience doesn’t run out as he preps Hinata, but his dick becomes more and more prevalent in his mind as he wishes he could be inside him rather than his fingers.

Finally, Hinata breathes at him to stop.

“I’m ready,” He says.

His body stutters at how empty he feels once Kageyama pulls his hand away, and he struggles to readjust so his hips are straddling Kageyama.

Kageyama cups Hinata’s face again. He brushes his thumb along his boyfriend’s bottom lip, pushing into his mouth so he can feel Hinata’s tongue against his fingertip.

“Do you want to use a condom?”

Hinata pauses for a moment, but then shakes his head.

Kageyama brushes a wisp of orange hair away from Hinata’s forehead.

As he adjusts so that he’s flat on his back again, dick stiff and leaking onto his stomach, Hinata picks up the bottle of lube and pours some into his hand. He spits into it and onto the tip of Kageyama’s dick. Kageyama inhales sharply as Hinata rubs the chilly fluid up and down his length, swirling the tip of his thumb onto Kageyama’s head and loving the sigh that escapes his boyfriend’s mouth.

“A-Are you ready?”

“Yeah, I am, babe. Are you?”

Hinata nods. A small droplet of sweat glitters against his forehead, making its way down Hinata’s flushed cheeks and past his swollen lips that glisten pink from Kageyama’s kisses, his orange hair slightly damp but still light and tousled from Kageyama’s fingers, and Kageyama finds himself absolutely fucking useless beneath the ethereal beauty that is his boyfriend.

“I love you, Shoyo.” Kageyama blurts out.

Oh, shit. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck me.

Neither of them have ever said it before, and he definitely never imagined saying it while they’re on top of each other naked with his dick pushing up into Hinata’s ass.

Hinata blushes and his eyes go wide.

He stares at Kageyama.

Kageyama stares back at him.

“I love you more.”

Hinata says it simply, with the nonchalance that comes with saying a universal truth anyone and everyone should already know.

“That’s impossible, dumbass.”

“No, it’s not, because I love you more than volleyball and there’s no way you could love me even more than that.”

Kageyama just watches him. And then he throws his arms around Hinata and pulls him down to squeeze against his chest because there are no words for how fucking dorky his boyfriend is or how much that makes him burst with love for him. Since when did he fall in love with such a nerd, God.

“Dumbass,” he whispers.

Hinata smiles against his chest and pulls himself out of Kageyama’s grip back into his position straddling him.

“Please.” He begs.

Kageyama places his hands securely on Hinata’s waist.

With a shaky breath at his lips, Hinata picks up his hips and takes Kageyama’s dick into his hand, guiding it to his entrance and getting used to the sensation of his tip applying pressure against him. He holds Kageyama’s length steady as he rolls his ass down ever so fucking slowly. Centimeter by centimeter, letting out a long, pitchy moan as Kageyama’s dick stretches him out more than he could have ever imagined.

Every vein and nerve in Kageyama’s length boils with the tightness of Hinata around him, and it takes all of his resolve to keep his body unmoving while Hinata adjusts to him. He lets out a string of expletives once Hinata finally bottoms out. The feeling is unreal.

They stay still for a moment, regaining their composure and inhaling raggedly.

“God, fuck, Shoyo, you’re so fucking tight.”

“Y-You’re j-just so… big,” Hinata retorts in between gasps.

Kageyama nearly loses it when Hinata swivels his ass against him. He throws his arm across his face, shading his eyes, but Hinata pulls it away. Eye contact.

“O-Okay. I’m gonna m-move now,” Hinata says.

“Take your t-time. I want you to feel comfortable, okay? I want you to f-feel so fucking good, Shoyo.”

Hinata whimpers and bites his lip at that. And then, he pushes himself up, letting Kageyama almost slide out of him with a wet sound that should be repulsive but only makes Kageyama’s pupils dilate. Just when his dick is about to slip out of his ass completely, Hinata lowers himself back down with a moan. Kageyama digs his fingers into Hinata’s flesh.

Hinata raises himself again and falls back down, over and over and over at an agonizing pace. Kageyama can tell he’s in pain, but the way his face scrunches up every time he slides back down against Kageyama’s dick and the pitiful noises he’s making tell otherwise. After several minutes, he leans back and puts his hands down on Kageyama’s thighs, swivelling his hips once more.

And then he starts to fucking bounce.

Kageyama loses his restraint, and he starts to buck up into his ass while his hands push Hinata down onto him, harder and harder. Hinata cries out at the sensation, but he only speeds up his movements.

“S-Shoyo…. So good.... S-So good for me, Shoyo…. You’re t-taking me so w-well…” Kageyama pants.

Each time Kageyama’s dick slams into his core, Hinata’s head falls back limply and he moans out Tobio’s name. Tobio Tobio Tobio. He chants it like his life depends on that name, like he can’t live without that sweet name on his tongue, and he really can’t.

On one particular thrust, Hinata shrieks with pleasure as Kageyama hits there. He almost loses his balance but Kageyama’s grip holds him in place.

“There, there, there, there, Kageyama, there, please, Tobio, there!” Hinata shouts as Kageyama bucks up into the same spot again. “Fuck me, Tobio. F-Fuck me.”

Kageyama growls and easily flips them so Hinata is pinned beneath him, his dick still plenty deep inside his ass. He places his hands on either side of him, Hinata wrapping his arms around his neck and legs around his waist, and he begins to thrust into Hinata as hard as he fucking can.

It’s easy for him to pinpoint Hinata’s prostate again, with how fucking desperate Hinata acts when he does. He half-grunts, half-moans every time he slams into Hinata, letting his instincts take over his body entirely.

“T-Tobio, I’m-”

“I know, I know babe. Come for me.”

Kageyama keeps hitting the spot that makes Hinata cry out and scrape against his back and quiver violently until Hinata lets out his loudest moan yet, loud enough the whole fucking country can probably hear it. Kageyama’s vaguely aware of hot, white liquid splashing against his abdomen as Hinata arches his back.

Kageyama picks up his pace even more knowing that Hinata already came, torturing Hinata’s prostate as he continues to pound his dick into it. His orgasm washes over him before he realizes it. He lets out a deep groan, his hips stuttering into Hinata a few more times. It’s like electricity shooting through his body as he has the best fucking orgasm of his life. He fills Hinata completely and then some.

There’s just the sound of gasping in the dim bedroom for a long time.

Kageyama tilts his head to look at Hinata. The smaller boy lies with his arms extended out on either side of him and his eyes focused on the fairy lights above them, his chest rising and falling and his body shivering slightly, not from cold, but from the intensity of his first orgasm. If this is what Hinata’s always going to look like post-sex, Kageyama wants to fuck him every night.

“Shoyo. Talk to me.”

“Hm? About what?”

He might look absolutely fucked, but he has the same naive tone that he always does.

“Are you happy?” Kageyama asks.

Hinata snuggles closer to his boyfriend, wrapping his arms around Kageyama’s chest and hitching his leg over Kageyama’s thighs. Kageyama mindlessly brings his hand up to play with Hinata’s hair.

“Of course I’m happy. That was… Better than I thought it would be.”

“Did you think it would be that bad?”

“No. I thought it would be perfect. But it was better than perfect.”

He kisses Kageyama’s collarbone, and Kageyama kisses the top of his head. The digital clock next to his bed flashes in his peripheral vision. 12:01 AM.

“Look, it’s midnight. Happy birthday, Shoyo.”

“Let’s do this again for my next birthday. And on holidays, too!”

Kageyama’s heart quite literally skips a beat.

“Your next birthday… You m-mean… Next year?”

“Yeah. What else would I mean?”

“You wanna be with me for another year?”

Hinata perks his head up at the dread on Kageyama’s face. It’s Hinata and it’s only Hinata and it will only ever be Hinata, but that’s just how Kageyama feels. Hinata’s too good to be his. He doesn’t deserve him, he knows that, so he always focuses on the time they have together now, and not their inevitable departure when they go to different schools and join different teams and lead different lives. That’s what Kageyama always feared in the back of his mind.

But Hinata gives him a puzzled look as he sits up on his elbows.

“I want to be with you for a lot longer than another year. Only if you want to, but I thought you did. Don’t you?”

Kageyama cups Hinata’s face with both of his hands.

“Shoyo. I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

“Good. Me, too.”

Kageyama wonders if Hinata can hear the chaos his heart is in as Hinata rests his head back down against his chest.

Lacing their fingers together, Kageyama feels contentment wash over his body and mind. He’ll never want anything else. He already has everything.

For your next birthday, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that. Whatever you want.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu smut #kagehina #kageyama #hinata #kagehina smut #daichi #sugawara #asahi #nishinoya #tanaka #tsukishima #yamaguchi #kageyama x hinata

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kendallstewy · 4 years ago

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A bit late on posting this, sorry my dear, but I was tagged by @woozapooza to list nine comfort films! Only the first two are in order 😊

1. Maurice (1987) - as a tiny queer 14 year old who had no friends - and I mean that quite literally, NONE - this movie was my best friend. I watched it every Sunday to help give me courage for a new week of loneliness. It’s my favorite gay film of all time. I’ve had the god tier pleasure of interacting with Rupert Graves a few times and I have part of a tweet he sent me (“have faith in yourself Xx”) tattooed on my wrist. Sixteen years later, watching this movie still feels like coming home. Literally my warm blanket movie. My heart bursts and I feel reborn. Is there a love that is literally all-consuming? Yeah, I have it for this film.

2. Velvet Goldmine (1998) - here’s another film that feels like coming home when I watch it. I first saw it when I was 17 and it helped me come out as bi to my mom. It got me into glam rock, which was another formative queer thing that helped keep me sane in my loneliness. Watching it obsessively and listening to the soundtrack on repeat were lifesavers. I felt so free. I can’t overstate the impact it had on me. I wore glitter nail polish just to remind myself of it. I was able to interact with the producer once and she kindly retweeted my thanks to her for helping make the film.

3. Les Amants (The Lovers) (1958) - this is my favorite French film, bar none. There is a very slow burn up to a part that is one of the most romantic bits of any film I have EVER seen. Seriously it is drenched in romance and I just bask in it. It feels like it was tailor made for me to feel like I’ve ascended to a higher plane where true love exists. I love watching it alone in the dark, the atmosphere it creates is magical. So soothing, just heavenly.

4. Whisper of the Heart (1995) - this is my favorite non-Miyazaki-directed Studio Ghibli film and definitely in my top 3 Ghibli films. I watched it again this week and it was so calming. It’s one of the best slice-of-life films ever and I adore the characters, especially the heroine. She is very much like me as a young teen and actually still really relatable to me at (almost) 30. It is so uplifting and I feel so at peace living in her world for two hours. The ending is pure joy.

5. God’s Own Country (2017) - another top notch gay film that is really spiritually nourishing. There’s a scene that’s not even a sex scene, it’s just kissing while shirtless, and it’s breathtaking, I think about it at random moments during the day. It’s one of the most tender things ever. In general I adore the two men and the journey Josh O’Connor’s character goes on in his self-growth, it’s really moving. I did love him in The Crown but to me he’ll always be Johnny. I could legit watch this every day.

6. The Lure (2015) - I went through a long period of watching this at one AM every night for weeks. Despite the tragic elements, I feel so happy when I watch the mermaid night club singers perform and then eat men’s hearts. The whole movie is like a patchwork quilt of styles and emotions but it never feels uneven and I love slipping into that crazy world and going along for the ride. It feels so natural to settle into the nuttiness. Also I have a mega crush on one of the lead actresses, so there’s that.

7. The Happy Prince (2018) - again despite the tragic elements, this is another one that I watched every one AM for weeks in order to fight loneliness and find solace in the presence of Oscar Wilde. I saw this in the theater and it was a transcendent experience. It’s visually gorgeous and written in a way that’s so stimulating to my mind without taxing me. I have loved Rupert Everett since I saw Another Country (1984) when I was about 15 and so seeing him give this most magisterial of performances is thrilling. It’s like swimming in beauty.

8. Rocketman (2019) - I saw this five times in the theater. Literally. Five. And I cried. I’m not even a particular Elton John fan although I do love all the songs they used, but the narrative of trying to find self-love without consistently sabotaging yourself is so relatable to me that I feel so connected to it. And of course the acting and music and dancing and costumes are so much fun. I always watch it in front of our biggish screen tv with the volume turned up high so I can pretend I’m in the theater. It’s both exciting and healing which is a potent combo.

9. My Own Private Idaho (1991) - god this is such a sad movie tbh but I feel like River Phoenix’s character is my best friend and I love spending time with him. He’s my favorite actor of all time and he is god tier levels of majestic pathos and gravitas in this. One of the best performances I have ever seen. Ever. I feel so close to his character who wants something so badly and is willing to literally take to the road to find it. It paradoxically shatters and heals me at the same time. Keanu Reeves is fun in it too and he and River are one of my favorite screen duos ever. I watch this every Halloween in memoriam of River.

Thanks Wooza ❤️ I tag literally all my followers. ☺️

#tag games #films #comfort films

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ipsomaniac · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on the 2010 Globe version of Henry IV Part I, which I rewatched last night (definitely got a lot more out of it than when I saw it live back in the day, to which I think my main takeout was just, “ha ha, Falstaff funny”). Lengthy rambles below:

- Obviously this version brings out the comedy of the play brilliantly. What I really like about the specific mode of humour is how it is the vehicle for the cruelty of the main characters - particularly Hal. The really funny moments are also very barbed and tense: watching the play I laughed a lot but always in an unsettled, uneasy way. Like, the pranks Hal pulls on Falstaff, the insults he throws at him: always hilarious but in a kind of, “jeeeeeeeeezzzz. yikes. wow he went there” kind of way. From their very first scene. You really do feel sorry for Falstaff, even though (at least in Part I) he’s always able to bounce back and give tit for tat. Parker and Allam play it brilliantly: with Parker bringing just enough seriousness to the delivery of his insults, and Allam giving just enough of a pause before diving back into the reparté, to indicate that the blow has struck home. These pauses leave just enough space for the audience to really understand the force of these insults.

- And then the “anon anon sir” bit: again, one of the funniest bits of the play, but utterly brutal because the victim is an impoverished uneducated serving boy of slow wit who just has no standing or ability whatsoever to parry the joke. And like, the best part of that whole bit is when Hal promises the boy, “I’ll give you a thousand pounds, ask me for it whenever”; Poins calls the boy from offstage; boy chimes out, “anon anon sir!”; and Hal says, “I mean I’ll give it to you but not right now.... ask me tomorrow!” And it’s the best written joke in the whole scene but it’s also completely fucked up how Hal uses his power and wealth to toy with this powerless kid like a cat playing with a mouse. As often happens in Shakespeare, the funniest bits are the cruelest (thinking bout Malvolio....)

- Seriously, what the fuck is up with Hal? His favourite passtime is bullying poor people. And athough he has clear disdain for them, he is obsessed with them (or with Falstaff specifically) - he won’t leave them alone.

- This version really brings out the homoeroticism of the play, I think in the right ways. It doesn’t try to translate that homoeroticism into modern notions of queerness/gay identity, but it also doesn’t shy away from just how much charge and innuendo there is in that direction. And this homoeroticism is inextricably bound up in Hal’s cruelty and insecurity. The bit where Hal imitates Hotspur coming home to his wife and acts out the "give my roan horse a drench” innuendo; and then during the “anon anon sir” bit when Hal spills beer/sack on the boy and then suckles it off his shirt... basically Hal is just super mean and insecure and horny for men he despises. And tbh the psychosexual element of it is so overt to me that at times it feels a lot more transgressive than just having some dudes kiss on stage. We’re just fully subjected to the full force of Hal’s weird sado-masochistic class complex.

- Also, although there are lots of references to whores and whoring, Hal basically doesn’t interact with any women in the play (aside from Mistress Quickly for 2 seconds) and this version doesn’t have him interact with nonspeaking background wenches. He’s simply having a very homosocial old time with the lads at all times. Good for him.

- In particular, Roger Allam’s performance really brought out for me just how effeminitely Falstaff is coded. Obviously there’s the fact that everyone, particularly Hal, is absolutely fixated on Falstaff’s effeminite physical traits, his fleshy corpulence, his roundness, his red cheeks... But it’s also embedded in Falstaff’s campness and the language he uses to relate to Hal. In his very first appearance, Falstaff jokingly accuses Hal of corrupting him:

“Thou...art indeed able to corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal, God forgive thee for it. Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing, and now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over.”

The cadence and language here (especially in Allam’s performance) evokes a hysterical fallen woman accusing her seducer. You really want to finish the clause, “before I knew thee, Hal,” with “I was a virgin”: that’s the sentiment here, literally embedded in the innuendo of “knew��, and even if it’s jokingly made, to have Falstaff position himself so effeminately in relation to Hal this early on is very pointed, I think. This campy coyness, especially when Falstaff is ironically “playing innocent”, is peppered throughout the play (“Thou seest I have more flesh than another man and therefore more frailty.”)

- There’s also a striking parallel between Hotspur/Kate and Hal/Falstaff. The hot-and-cold way Hotspur mistreats his wife through heated flirtation followed by abrupt rejection, crystalises the same dynamic with Hal and Falstaff. They bait each other and bicker like a married couple; their barbed reparté expresses a kind of lustful antagonism: they give off strong Who’s Afraid of Virigina Woolf vibes. Falstaff is Hal’s wife.

- Given Falstaff’s campness/effeminicy, the scene where he eviscerates Mistress Quickly is interesting. On the one hand you don’t necessarily have to read loads into it; can be understood as standard misogynistic humour. But the sudden viciousness of it - “go, you thing, go”; “she’s neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to have her” - feels both compensatory (Falstaff using misogyny to assert his own masculinity), performative (the performance is for Hal) and also smells of a type of misogyny stereotypically characteristic of gay men; the implied repugnance towards female genitalia, the disdain for the superfluous sex. Probs reading too much into it (he’s also simply lashing out cos she’s reminding him of the debts he owes her) but it’s an interesting moment.

- This play really keeps overtly telling you what is going to happen. The directness with which Hal, again from the very first scene, continually tells Falstaff that one day he is going to fuck him over. The extempore scene where Hal and Falstaff take turns to play the king is particularly good because it explicitly foreshadows two confrontations that are already clearly structurally inevitable: the confrontation Hal will have with his father later in Part I, and the eventual moment when Hal will publicly cast off Falstaff in Part II. To me this also adds to the barbed aspect of the play: as much as Hal and Falstaff love to flirt, as much as they like to play with the power dynamics, we are constantly reminded of the stark reality of that power dynamic and the inevitability of how this is going to pan out.

#babble #shakespeare

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maltedmilkchocolate · 5 years ago

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This is purely salt because I keep seeing that “A gay relationship shouldnt only be obvious to gay people who’ve been drenched in fandom culture for years.” post go around and it really pisses me off. Not because it’s wrong. It’s definitely right. We absolutely do need more explicitly obvious representation. But for the fact I know it’s a post about Good Omens. And I’m forever pissed off that a book turned into a tv show, that’s had a loving fandom for YEARS has suddenly come so horrifically under fire for not being ‘gay enough’ because two nonbinary angels didn’t fucking kiss. I’m sorry all of ya’ll don’t think the show is queer enough with several nonbinary characters, literally all the angels and demons who present in various ways at different times, with gendered names that don’t match with their outwards appearence, and a horse rider of the apocalypse who explicitly uses they/them pronouns. It frustrates me to no end, that the base line for love is kissing on screen, and not the very cinematically obvious interactions shown between air conditioning over 6000 years. It’s really tiring as an ace enby person that the base line for a queer love story is for it to be explicitly gay, and gay only. It’s only valid if it’s ‘gay’. There’s no other queer form of love than two men kissing on screen, otherwise it doesn’t count at all. Like i’m fully in agreement we highkey need more queer representation in the media. The whole range of representation. There is no argument there. But holy shit. They never kissed in the books, or the radio adaption. They never needed to. Literally every reader interacting with this story understood that these two characters love each other in a way that’s wholly meaningful and significant to their dynamic. Also, the ENTIRETY of Good Omens is literally a love story. Not just ‘romantic’. It’s a love story about loving humanity, loving the earth, loving the world because *you live here*, loving your friends, and your family, loving the people you’re fighting for, and the people you are fighting alongside of, and yes, romantic love too. The whole message of Good Omens is Love. In EVERY form. The base line is not romantic at all (for the broad anaylsis of the book, y’know, the OVERARCHING THEME. Not the Fandom Lense.) I’ve had to black list and block my favourite book because no one on this website has any ounce of rationality. Literally every other post i see about Good Omens on my dash is ‘it’s not good enough because they didn’t kiss’. And I am so tired of it. Also the sudden attack on Neil Gaiman as if he is somehow homophobic despite his massive involvement in the queer community as a major ally. Is he flawless? No, of course not. Everyone’s flawed. But yikes, what a reach. So yeah, I’m really over seeing that post constantly. It’s right, in the general sense. In the sense that we as a society NEED more media representation. But the fact I know it’s literally a post about Good Omens, just smothers the whole thing in salt. Nonbinary, and queer characters that don’t explicitly kiss, despite all the framing to show their importance to each other, just isn’t good enough because it’s only “obvious to gay people who’ve been drenched in fandom culture for years...” which... No. This book is older than tumblr, and the bubble ya’ll live in. I’m tired of people dismissing queer rep just because no one kissed. The whole thing is suddenly invalidated despite a nonbinary character cast. Yikes. And most of all i’m just tired that I can’t enjoy one of my favourite things because half the posts on my dash are complaints.

#major saltiness #do not reblog

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curriebelle · 7 years ago

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Episode Ignis Feels Like Fanfiction and That’s a Good Thing

Ok so I’m having a Thought.

You know when people say something reads “like fanfiction”, and it’s meant to be a criticism? The phrase is one of those intangibles, one of those agreed-upons, where no one can define it quite accurately but everyone thinks they know what it means. Usually it’s a combination of deviation from the original tone, bleaching out character flaws and complexities, a lack of understanding of nuance, and a reverent or worshipful attitude towards old characters, moments, settings, and iconography (and iconography is just the Stuff. Star Wars iconography is lightsabers, wookies and Jedi robes).

That’s a pretty reductive description of fanfiction of course, because a lot of fanfic - whether it’s well or poorly written - doesn’t necessarily follow those patterns. Weirdly enough, saying a sequel or reboot reads “like fanfiction” often implies that the writer doesn’t understand something about the source material - that they’re oversimplifying, or they’re fanning about while failing to understand what a “good” sequel would actually require. And that’s pretty ironic, because fans - obsessive detail-hoarding, secondary-character-worshipping pastiche-crafters that they are - often know the source material better than anyone, sometimes better than the creators themselves, and they are very aware of what they are erasing or changing when they move Marvel into a fluffy coffee shop AU.

But I’m kind of digressing, because my point is that “this feels like fanfiction” shouldn’t be seen as a criticism, but rather as a gut feeling that we need to unpack. Sometimes it leads to legitimate criticism that, while worth addressing, actually has very little to do with fanfiction. And sometimes it leads to this weird 4:30 am conclusion: Episode Ignis is when “this feels like fanfiction” should be deployed as a compliment. Spoilers onward, for both Episode Ignis and FFXV.

I’m talking specifically about the alternate ending, here, which is tantamount to an FFXV fix-it fic. In this version Ignis averts the tragic ending of FFXV, and though he prepares to sacrifice his own life to do so, it ends up costing nothing. Ignis survives with even prettier hero-scarring than he gets in the regular plot. The episode fills in a sizable story gap after Leviathan knocks Noct out, and closes a few additional plotholes (I wondered what happened to that one obnoxiously overdesigned Imperial guy: turns out Ravus stabbed him). It spends some time with likable characters (Ardyn, yeeee) and underdeveloped characters (again, Ravus). Ignis gets roughed up and drenched, loses the glasses, and I’m 90% sure the animators made his eyes bigger in the cutscenes for extra pretty. He gains maximum plotline power, and Adam Croasdell voice acts the shit out of some sassy comebacks and anguished screaming (ok, this is unrelated, but when he’s doing the regular stormbind combo, it sounds like he screams FUCK in one of his battle grunts and it makes me laugh every time). He can liberate Altissia more or less by himself, and that’s before he drives a goddamn speedboat away from pursuant megarobots. So for anyone calling Mary Sue, yes, Ignis dives headfirst into that. He basically becomes Magic James Bond.

The whole episode is also pretty blatantly queer-coded. We get a very cuddly flashback to kid Noctis, and Ignis’s vow to stand at his side. Ignis is monomaniacal when it comes to finding Noctis. Noctis eiher drops the l-word, referring directly to Ignis and the freshly fridged Lunafreya (I’m still salty about that one, sorry), or says Ignis will always be in his heart depending on the ending. There’s a fantastic gifset going around of the official couples in previous Final Fantasies (Squall and Rinoa, Tidus and Yuna) declaring the exact same thing Ignis does in the alternate ending. “Rinoa, even if the world turns on you, I’ll be your knight”. “There’s no way I’ll let Yuna go”, even if I have to break all the rules of your stupid religion. Even if it costs my own life, I won’t let you take Noctis away. The queer subtext here is one of those things where it’s purposefully vague - just enough emotional evidence and physical contact that you can read romantic feelings there if you want, but just short of an actual romance to leave interpretations open. If you’re convinced Noctis and Luna were in love, Episode Ignis probably won’t debunk that.

So Ignis and his Episode are both powerful, emotional, pretty, potentially kinda gay, and ridiculously awesome.

And honestly, it is phenomenal.

Episode Ignis is a blast to play. His combat style is very fun and quick and fluid and flashy, and the grappling hook in the first portion makes you feel superheroic. Killing Ardyn, meanwhile, makes you feel godlike. It is an incredible surge of adrenaline to take on armies and deities by your lonesome. The gameplay and narrative reflect each other here, just like they do in the base game. FFXV seems happy at first, and the combat is pretty entertaining with all the goofy combo-attacks, but that game is a tragedy. It’s all the more tragic by how fun it is to begin with, and by the end it is painful to play. Characters get older, places fall apart, people die, and you have to escort Ignis around for a chapter while he grows used to being blind and Gladio constantly bitches at you for walking too fast. The photo mechanic is introduced to break your heart later, to show you how fleeting youth and pleasure can truly be under backbreaking destiny.

And in retaliation, Episode Ignis thrives on the power of Fuck You. Long commutes by car, mundane in the moment but peaceful upon reflection decades later? Fuck You, I have a grappling hook. Sections that force you to walk slowly through a dungeon and think about what you’ve done? Fuck You, I’ve got two daggers, lightning teleportation and button-mashing hands. Musings about the ravages of time, and aching nostalgia for youth? Fuck You, Ignis is prettier than ever. A tragic ending pre-ordained by prophecy? Fuck You, Ignis is going to re-write that fate by being clever, patient, and brave enough to sacrifice his life, but double Fuck You, he gets to live as well. Bullets flying, health bar low, multiple explosions and Atlas Ripped decking airships in the background? Fuck. You. It’s time to make some fucking soup.

With all that in mind, it makes sense that people might accuse Episode Ignis of being tone-deaf, of being fanfiction in all the “bad” ways - it neglects the nuance of the original, and papers over complex themes so everything can end up hunky-dory, but I still think that’s too easy.

Here’s the thing: Episode Ignis can only exist as fanfiction - or as alternate-ending DLC, I guess. FFXV is the story of Noctis and his story has an ending and it’s horribly, horribly sad, but it’s also what the story is built around. You might find it too depressing or too grim or you might find it just right, but it is well-structured. FFXV is careful with its themes and patterns and foreshadowing.

Because of that care, Ignis screwing Ardyn’s plans out of whack and saving Noctis from his fate couldn’t occur in the main game. FFXV is not about Ignis. It’s about Noctis. And the gameplay, built as it is around creating nostalgia - photographs, long car rides, camping, friendship - wouldn’t work if the ending wasn’t agonizing enough to make you long for the good old days. Maybe Noctis didn’t have to die or maybe he did, but the ending of FFXV was always going to hurt.

FFXV is an emotional project, and that project is to make the player painfully nostalgic. With that intriguing goal achieved, Episode Ignis exists as a response, and it can never really be more than that. It’s an ending I like better, but it is an alternate ending.

If you think about it, Episode Ignis didn’t need that alternate ending. It could have existed perfectly well as a companion to FFXV, filling in a much-needed blank (and without the alternate ending that’s exactly what it does). But in making a response to FFXV instead, they challenged a lot of assumptions FFXV needed to make in order to tell its story. FFXV assumes its prophecy is the only answer, as do its characters. FFXV yanks a great deal of agency away from Ignis, Prompto and Gladio when it asks them to sit still for a decade and wait for their friend to die without hunting for an alternative

Why can’t they try something else? Why can’t they defeat their nemesis on their own terms? I mean, who the heck does Bahamut think he is, anyway? Who says the ending can’t be happy, and the future can’t be bright?

Those are exactly the questions a fanfiction writer would ask. FFXV created those questions, and Episode Ignis addresses them, but in a way that acts as more of a breach than a closure. It’s one route to a happy ending - so maybe there are more. This is also the reason I brought up the queercoding in Episode Ignis. If there is any genre that needs a complete overhaul from grimdark tragedy into happy endings, it’s the scourge that is the modern queer romance story. There are so many of those bloody stories ending in anguish or separation or suicide or displeasure, and not nearly enough fairytales. Having a tragic ending overturned by the power of queer love is an insanely empowering experience, and that’s probably why you see so many posts about how Ignis’s gay love can pierce the veil of death and save the day. Episode Ignis didn’t need its queercoding any more than it needed its alternate ending, but the two make sense together: both of them are stories that people are absolutely aching for.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything quite like this - a company actively revising their story, overturning its mood, questioning its plot, granting a completely different ending, and then asking fans to pay 6.99 for it. It’s different from alternate film endings, because those are DVD extras and one always wins the theatrical release. It’s different from re-imaginings or adaptations because Episode Ignis is...just not quite that. It can’t exist on its own, unlike most remakes. Video games are always fluid texts to a certain extent, but now developers are even relinquishing the solidity of lore and cutscenes. It’s so odd.

At the decision point of Episode Ignis, you can use R1 and L1 to flip the camera back and forth, moving between a shot of Ardyn and a shot of Ignis. It’s a tiny, insignificant moment, one that almost feels like a mistake - like maybe the developers couldn’t figure out how to stage a normal shot-reverse-shot. But that moment became an oddly powerful synecdoche for what Episode Ignis was to me. If you want to look at this story from a different angle, well, go for it. Here’s another place you can point the camera. Maybe the sun will rise over there too.

#ffxv #episode ignis #what the fuck it's six am #happy 2018

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anghraine · 7 years ago

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“whatever we deny or embrace” - fic

Nobody asked for genderbent lesbian bedsharing, but I wanted to decompress after midterms, so you get it anyway!

As a sidenote, I originally plotted this (for lack of a better term) for Rebelcaptain Appreciation Week back in ... a long time ago. It was specifically for Day 4, “AU of your choice,” so it actually is what I’d always planned to write after waking in a minefield anyway.

fandom: Star Wars

characters: Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor (as Cassia); Jyn/Cassian

verse: the queer Rogue One AU, of course!

length: 1900 words

stuff that happens: After kissing Cassia in the elevator, Jyn is calm and mature about sharing her bed. Platonically. As you do.

Jyn had nightmares long before she went to Scarif. She had them during the long days when Cassia hung between life and death: some unfamiliar and vivid, others worn stale but never easy. And she had them afterwards, old and new swimming together, though less often.

That, she suspected, had something to do with Cassia’s soft(ish) bed. Of course, she’d slept in it before, while Cassia floated in bacta: no point in making do with a square of ground or the miserable barracks when she knew a perfectly fine bunk was available. It hadn’t done much for her then.

Sleeping near other people didn’t generally improve things. Jyn avoided it whenever she could, and slept with a hand on her blaster when she couldn’t. But she hadn’t trusted any of those people. She hadn’t trusted anyone since Saw left her, and hardly anyone before that. Cassia, though—Cassia who had Jyn’s back without need, who showed up with naked vulnerability and a strike team, who climbed after her with cracked vertebrae and torn knees and fire in her side—Cassia was different. And when Jyn fumbled through an explanation for the rumpled bed, Cassia hurriedly replied that she didn’t mind, the barracks were awful, Jyn could stay whenever she wanted, keep staying if she’d rather.

As it happened, Jyn would very much rather. Her inarticulate mutter of assent probably gave the opposite impression of the one she intended, but it was assent. She’d carved out space for herself in far less palatable circumstances. Jyn readily marched into Cassia’s quarters with everything she owned, namely the clothes on her back, her mother’s crystal, and Cassia’s blaster.

Mine now.

Cassia herself looked startled. Between one instant and the next, though, her look of surprise melted into tentative pleasure. Another moment smoothed that over, too, but Jyn had caught enough glimpses of it in their time together to recognize the expression at full blast. Relief swept through her—not that she’d worried that the offer might be only words, that Cassia would withdraw her welcome, but—but it was good to know for sure.

Reassured further by Cassia’s offer of her clothes, Jyn immediately took her up on it. They fit her better than Cassia herself, in fact, though she had to roll up the ankles of the sleep-pants to keep from tripping on them. Whatever Cassia had been doing before they met, it must have involved fewer meals than Jyn got in Imperial captivity. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Jyn wasn’t sure she wanted to leave the fresher, either, wearing nothing but thin cotton before a woman she’d passionately kissed. Just once, in the turbolift, and she could have marked it down to the wild blur of victory and loss, to desperation, to giving or taking something before very probable death. She could have, except she knew it would be a lie.

Almost from the first, they pulled at each other like stars. By the time she admitted to uncertainty in the hangar, she could feel them swinging into orbit about each other (“welcome home,” Cassia murmured, dark eyes alight, and Jyn—wanted). A shared smile had them both shaken from the impact, shocks jolting through her body at a brush of Cassia’s arm, and … and she couldn’t even think of it all. The details didn’t matter. Only the simple truth that she’d kissed Cassia because she wanted to. She still wanted to.

Maybe. Probably. Force, she didn’t know. Everything was more complicated now, even if she hadn’t decided to take up residence in Cassia’s quarters. Cassia’s bed.

Jyn stared at the door and told herself not to be a fool. This was Cassia, not some attractive stranger in a cantina. She didn’t want to snap any bridges, anyway.

Thankfully, Cassia had turned down the lights and climbed onto the far side of her bunk by the time Jyn emerged. Despite the inescapably humid heat, she lay under a thin blanket. Jyn just shook her head as she sat on the edge of the bed, trying to look unconcerned as she calculated how far she could sprawl without touching Cassia.

Jyn tugged up her side of the blanket and pushed the whole thing towards Cassia. “You don’t need to share. I’m already melting.”

With a sleepily grateful sound, Cassia pulled the rest of the blanket around herself, ducking even her head into the layers. Jyn could see nothing of her beyond the distortion of the blanket and the spill of her hair over her pillow. Altogether, she looked silly enough that Jyn managed to lie down with only moderate nervousness.

“You’re still not warm?”

“I’m never warm”—came from the Cassia-shaped lump. Sounding a little more alert, she added, “I should have told you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Jyn, meaning it. She’d been perfectly comfortable on Jedha with nothing but a scarf added to her usual clothes. Cassia, of course, had buried herself in a fur-lined coat that could have contained two of her. “I’m a furnace, anyway.”

Cassia’s fringe and upper face emerged, eyes heavy and blinking. “Good.”

“Right,” said Jyn inanely. “Good.”

She almost laughed as Cassia withdrew into her cocoon, her breaths evening out within a few minutes. It could be a trick, or at least a deception, but Jyn didn’t see any purpose in that. She chose to believe her asleep, and chose to lie there in the quiet, letting her mind drift from the urgency of the last month to this small, peaceful corner she could call home. Not in itself, of course. They might well be gone in a month. The person, though, sleeping with easy trust beside her—

Well.

Jyn had no nightmares that first night, probably because residual nerves kept her awake for most of it. On the second, she slept in longer fits and starts, lulled by Cassia’s slow, steady breaths and occasional murmur. She kept waking in a sweat, since her body seemed to move from the edge of the bed every time she fell unconscious, tangling with the side of Cassia’s blanket. But she slept.

On the third night, she dreamed.

She didn’t remember most of the dreams; perhaps they were even innocuous. But she remembered the usual return to Eadu, water drenching her as fire rained from above, her father dying in her arms. He knew her, and that seemed her only consolation—she couldn’t leave him, but Cassia was there, pulling her away like she’d pulled her from Saw’s bunker. Cassia had talked her into that first escape by promising that she’d found Galen, that she’d bring her to her father, and now! She’d say, she’d say that she had done it, that this was … oh, some wriggling Rebellion lie, like Saw always said.

Always, except at the last. Save the Rebellion! save the dream, he’d cried, but this was the Rebellion, and she couldn’t think of Saw with her father here, struggling for breath, the smell of his blood in her nose. Her father who had only left when forced, only—Cassia was still tugging her, Cassia who never left her at all, but who had used and betrayed her, and she wouldn’t run, she’d been the Alliance’s pawn long enough.

Another bomb exploded, near enough that Jyn threw herself back. Cassia didn’t.

In some perversion of irony, the explosion flung her body towards Galen, sprawling in a lifeless heap beside him. Jyn’s rage sank into horror as she stared down, grey-brown and near-black hair plastered to dead skin, blood soaking through Rebel jacket and Imperial coat alike.

That wasn’t right, she thought dimly—it hadn’t been—but the cool intrusion vanished as Jyn screamed for them, not even knowing if the water rolling down her face came from the sky or her own eyes. Who cared? Cassia—Papa—no, no, not—

Jyn wanted to climb down after them, but she couldn’t. She had to get the plans out. She had to, they’d understand, but she couldn’t turn her gaze from the broken bodies below her, limp on the sterile Citadel platform. Couldn’t, except someone was grasping at her, jostling her grip where she’d climbed, and she had to get out, she had to, or none of it mattered.

“Get off,” she snarled, somehow already at the top of the tower, still dogged by her hanger-on. She didn’t have time for this. Jyn leapt forward and tackled the stranger, the—

She blinked down at the woman beneath her. “Cassia!”

Dazed, she said, “Jyn?”

“I …” At some point, Jyn had leveraged her entire body against Cassia, holding her down with her weight and clenched thighs, her hands gripping Cassia’s wrists and pressing them to the mattress. Quite evidently, Jyn had won the fight, but she didn’t understand why it existed. Even at their most antagonistic, she’d never dreamed of attacking Cassia. Yet here she lay, yielding and defeated under her.

The vibrant light of Scarif had vanished, the dark of night brightened only to a paler dimness. Shadows flickered over the bed, over Cassia’s face, obscuring and illuminating her as Jyn remembered from … from the lift? But that didn’t ... that ...

Oh.

“Sorry,” Jyn muttered. “Nightmare.”

“I guessed,” said Cassia, dry even now, pinned to the mattress. But her eyes were wide, or seemed like it. Jyn couldn’t be sure in this lighting, the way it heightened the dramatic lines of her face. Even her hair spilled into monotones, fanning black about her head. Softer darkness shaded over her left jaw and traced the line of her throat, deepened where her pulse beat.

Jyn neither knew nor cared what she looked like at the moment, yanked out of a nightmare after hours of sleep, still unthreading her confusion. But Cassia, Cassia was beautiful.

(Even for her.)

Wildly, Jyn wondered what would happen if she let go of Cassia’s wrists and leaned down, if she followed the impulse to drag her mouth over the shadows of her throat, to scrape her teeth over the dark hollow of it. Would Cassia push her away, or—? She almost shivered, a heady mix of guilt and desire and lingering adrenaline running through her. Not that she should feel guilt over anything. Apart from attacking Cassia in her own bed.

Fuck. She hadn’t slept enough for this.

Cassia, meanwhile, remained calm and relaxed, her skin pleasantly cool. Jyn half-envied that and half-resented it. She’d felt no resistance from her, not for a moment. Which meant Jyn hadn’t really won.

“You can fight better than that,” she said, disappointed. “You didn’t even try.”

“I don’t get into fights I can’t win,” said Cassia. Her voice was hoarse with sleep; Jyn usually stayed silent through nightmares, but she might have woken her this time.

In fairness, she doubted it took much. Either way, Cassia must have been trying to help.

“You’re a Rebel,” Jyn pointed out.

Cassia just blinked up at her. “We can win. You know that.”

She sounded a little breathless, probably because she had a hundred-odd pounds of Jyn on her. Belatedly, Jyn realized that it must seem strange that she’d just stayed there, holding Cassia down. And she could think of about a dozen ways it might turn infinitely more awkward.

Jyn released her and climbed off, cheeks so hot that she spared a moment’s gratitude for the poor lighting. Since one apology more than filled her week’s quota, she confined herself to a skeptical,

“I’m more formidable than the Empire?”

Cassia rubbed her wrists, neither concealing nor making a production of it. “Only in hand-to-hand.”

Smiling in the dark, Jyn laid herself back down. “I’ll take it.”

It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep again, or to see more horrors through the night, variously real or magnified or spawned by her mind. Less of them, though. And once or twice, they slipped into something altogether different: Cassia, soft and pliant beneath her again, her pulse thrumming against Jyn’s teeth.

#this has been rocking around my head waaay longer than the half-finished baze one #so it's kind of weird that it's so much shorter?? but it is my Happy Place anyway #incidentally: cassia was legit asleep before and does not catch a single wink afterwards #anghraine's fic #rule 63 #the queer rogue one fic #otp: welcome home #jyn erso #cassian andor #star wars #honestly this is a mix of my vague mental outline from april and sheer concentrated id

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writtenthroughtime · 8 years ago

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Mo Chridhe - Part 12

Previous Installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11

Jamie pulled Claire down the sidewalk at a run, while keeping a soaked newspaper overtop of her head. The rain relentlessly hammered all around, the trees swayed with the force of the storm. Seeing a faint glow of lights ahead, Claire redirected Jamie to the establishment.

The smell of tea, coffee and old books surrounded them. Jamie taking a deep breath and letting out a contented sigh at the comforting smell.

“Where have ye brought us, Sassenach?” he asked, looking around the cramped space. Worn leather arm chairs and sun faded plush velvet chairs were strategically placed around windows and bookshelves.

Claire shrugged while running her fingers through the drenched curls.

“Storms really ragin’ innit?” a deep Appalachian accented voice said from directly behind Claire, causing her to jump and let out a gasp. Jamie whirled around to face the stranger.

The old man had a permanent hunch, and his beard would rival that of Brianna’s favorite Harry Potter character, Dumbledore.

“M’name’s Art Altizer, and this here is my shop. Feel free to come ‘round to the back to dry off by the fire.” In his accent it sounded like ‘far’. He gestured to follow as he weaved around furniture and books with surprising ease. “I have a small selection of drinks and cakes if you’re interested.”

Jamie quirked a brow at Claire, and she smiled in response. They followed Art to the back where a teen leaned against the countertop, her tattooed hands tapping on her cell phone.

“Dee here can make the fanciest coffees you’ve ever seen, with little designs and everything floating in the cup!” the old man complimented his worker.

With a hug and an eye roll Dee corrected Art, “It’s latte foam art Grandda, not rocket science.”

Art smiled and let out a chuckle. “Ah, so you’ve said before. Her lattes are almost too beautiful to drink,” he said, turning back to Jamie and Claire.

“We’ll take two, but make one decaf, please,” Claire said to Art who beamed and clapped.

“Very good! Dee, m’dear…”

“Already ahead of you Gramps!”

Jamie guided Claire to a loveseat that sat directly in front of a roaring fire. He sighed and peeled off his jacket.

“Weatherman said this is the storm off the latest hurricane. Should last few more hours. Y’all are welcome to stay as long as you like. The books are free to read and borrow. I have a sign out sheet just over there.” Art pointed a crooked finger at an owl carved podium.

“Thank you. You’ve been so kind to us,” Claire said, taking the latte from Dee.

A small bell dinged and Art’s eyes lit up again as he scurried towards the front to welcome another customer.

“Gramps loves having people here. Not too many people stop by anymore, not since the Barnes & Noble opened up down the street,” Dee commented, pulling at a loose purple strand of hair.

“I’m sorry to hear that. This place looks incredible!” Jamie said in earnest. Dee gave a half-hearted smile and shrugged.

“He spends all his time here since my Granny Deeana passed last year. He opened this place for her because she loved sweets and a good book at all times,” she said with an imitation of her grandmother and a smile. “I was named after her and spent all of my childhood in here. I fell in love with the place too. I wish more customers would come.”

“We saw your light, that’s how we knew to come here. All along the street, the windows were dark and uninviting, but this…” Claire waved her hand. “This place showed warmth and led us here.”

Dee snorted. “Yeah, well, three more buildings down and you’d have found a Starbucks and the Barnes & Noble. That’s where tourists want to go.”

Whatever she was going to say next was interrupted by her grandfather ushering in another disheveled person.

“...oh yes sir! We do have scones. Butterscotch, blueberry, chocolate, and vanilla flavored ones all in this here case. Which would you like and I’ll have Dee warm it up for you?”

The man chuckled. “Surprise me.”

Ice formed in the pit of Claire’s stomach at the voice, a voice she hoped didn’t belong to who she thought it could be. When the stranger turned around, his blond hair and light blue eyes confirmed Claire’s dread. Her ex had found her.

“Cl-Claire?” John stuttered and Jamie stiffened at Claire’s side.

“Hello John,” she said tersely.

“I can’t believe it! Claire Beauchamp as I live and breathe!” he exclaimed, pulling her up into a hug. Claire patted his back lightly. “What are you doing stateside? Last I heard you were in South Africa on some wild goose chase of a dig with that hairbrained uncle of yours.”

Claire’s lips tightened and she nodded. “Yes, well, time does move on and that was nearly fifteen years ago. I was in South Africa looking for a magical talisman my Uncle believed to be hidden near the cape, but that was on my summer holiday from uni.” Claire groped behind her for Jamie’s hand, when he laced his fingers with hers, she pulled him to her side. “This is my husband, James Fraser.”

“Hu-husband?” The smaller man’s adam’s apple bobbed as his eyes shifted nervously, taking in the large form of Jamie Fraser. “Ni-nice to meet you. Claire and I go way back.” John stuck out a hand that Jamie took, squeezing harder than necessary.

“Aye, weel Claire hasna ever mentioned ye.” His Scots burr thickening with each word, overpowering the nasal british accent of John’s, who nervously laughed.

“Ah, you see, we ah… didn’t end things on good terms.”

Jamie arched an eyebrow as John nervously played with the hair at the back of his head.

“No, you see, ah… well. I mean that… what happened was…”

“He cheated on me with the local paper boy then tried to force me into marriage because his mother wanted him to marry a woman, all while maintaining his relationship with the underaged boy. Mind you, this happened when I was eighteen and had no inclination to be wed,” Claire stated with little emotion. “I had just been accepted to Oxford and several schools here in the US. I wanted to be a doctor, not a nobleman’s beard.”

Jamie tried hard not to laugh, a quick pinch to his side stopped it from exploding out of him.

“Aye, weel then, John. Did ye and yer paperboy lover continue after Claire rejected ye?”

John jerked his head. “No. Percy decided that he’d rather take his chances with another man than me.”

“Then who was the lucky lad that married ye?” Jamie nodded at the golden band on John’s hand.

John shoved his hand into his coat pocket. “Her name is Isobel, and we have a son together. My mother got what she always wanted. A grandchild and for me to marry a woman.”

Claire arched an eyebrow at this. “Well congratulations, John. I had no idea you were willing to give a woman company again.”

A feminine hurmph came from behind Claire.

“Isobel!” John said nervously, walking around to get his wife and the toddler at her side.

“Izzy, this is Claire Fraser and her husband James. Claire, this is my wife Isobel and my son, George.”

“Hello,” Isobel sneered.

“Hello,” Claire said sweetly then turned to the child. “And hello to you, young man. How old are you? I believe my son may be about your age.”

“Five,” George said, sticking out his hand showing all of his fingers.

“Oh my! You are a big boy.” George nodded and gave her a toothy smile.

“My daddy says that I’m gonna be even bigger than he is!”

Claire smiled at the boy and nodded. “I’m sure you will be.”

“Do not speak to my son like that,” Isobel said hatefully.

“I’m sorry, in what way?” Claire asked confused, eyebrows drawing in.

“Like a condescending bitch! I know exactly who you are, Claire Beauchamp! You’re the bitch who ruined my life!”

Taken aback, Claire looked from Isobel to John, who was frowning at the ground. “I don’t--”

“Don’t give me that! It was your fault I had to marry a queer! Your fault I had to give him a sorry excuse of a--” She cleared her throat. “It’s your fault! If you would have married him when told, I wouldn’t be in this situation. Do you have anything to say now?” she demanded, her face turning puce.

“Your hat is crooked,” Claire said calmly.

George had begun to cry and jerk his hand away from his mother, who was squeezing it to the point of pain. John walked over to her, but she threw the child’s hand away and stormed out of the shop and back out into the rain.

“John, I am so sorry,” Claire said, tears in her eyes. John shook his head picking up his son trying to soothe his pain and ease the crying.

“Let Claire take a look at him, aye? We’ll keep an eye on him if ye want to run after her,” Jamie offered, patting John on the shoulder.

He nodded reluctantly. “Georgy?”

The boy’s red and tear tracked face dug deeper into his father’s neck. “Georgy, I’m going to let Mrs. Fraser hold you and look at your hand.”

George shook his head and a muffled ‘no’ could be heard.

“Yes, dear one. Mrs. Fraser is a doctor and knows how to help hurt people.”

A small, ‘okay’ was murmured and John handed over his son to Claire.

“I’ll be back shortly. This isn’t the first time Izzy has spoken out like this. I,” he sighed. “I don’t think she’s happy with our new move to the states, or my other preference.”

They both nodded at John as he took off after his irate wife. Claire didn’t even have to ask when Dee and Art brought her cloths and ice in a plastic bag. She checked George’s hand, and didn’t think anything was broken. He cried and hiccupped himself to sleep on her chest while cradling the ice wrapped hand between them.

Jamie smoothed back the boys light brown hair. “At first I was jealous and angry at yer ex, but now all I feel is pity. The lad shouldna have to experience what’s to come.”

“He’ll need a friend,” Claire confirmed.

“Aye, maybe a whole houseful of friends, the lad and yer John.” Jamie kissed Claire’s temple and rubbed George’s back.

“I think the Fraser clan can help there. So long as you don’t mind the past…?” Claire asked nervously.

“It’s yer past, Sassenach. I ken I wish I was yer only man, but I canna fault ye for lookin around when I wasna there.” He kissed her again and she leaned into his embrace.

“One day, I’d like to have a less exciting trip to a coffee and tea shop,” Claire mumbled and Jamie laughed.

#Mo Chridhe #Modern AU #Jamie and Claire #featuring: LJG #Claire is pregnant with another Fraser Bairn #The Ex a Dragon and A Wizard #Prompt from A03

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